Was the Billy Idol involvement. Was that part of why you came to the West Coast? I came to mix a disco record at Larrabee Studios with a girl named Luscious Dame in the Pretty Vein, and what had happened was Keith Richie Zito, Arthur Barrow. Dave conquers all. These people that I met through Billy Idol. They had a waste of studios, not Oasis Mastering, but Oasis Studios, which is now Larrabee North on Lankershim Boulevard.

Who is Giorgio Moroder studio? I got there, he had three films going on at the same time, so I plugged in and they said, you want to work? And Richie put me to work. I was working with the motels. I was working with Berlin, you know, with Terry Nunn and whatever. I mean, it was just nonstop there because it was where Hollywood met music soundtracks.

Giorgio always had superstars in there. Keith Forsey was in there writing the Heat is on for for Glenn Frey for Beverly Hills Cop, because they were doing the score for Beverly Hills Cop with Harold Faltermeyer. We had Breakfast Club in one room, Beverly Hills Cop in another room, and in another film in another room. He had three studios there.

He had one SSL, all digital Sony 3324 at the time. He had a mag machine with 3 or 4 different head configurations, so we could record to mag before digital and the film. Excuse me. The music editors used to come into the studio with a movie, Ola. During during Breakfast Club, I would finish a cue. Gary Chang worked with us.

Gary Chang was programing all the synthesizers for Breakfast Club using Mekele language, music, computer language through a Fairlight writing code at the time, writing lines of code to to sequence this. And then we’d finish a cue. I’d mixed the cue to two tracks in the Sony 3324, and then we’d transfer that over to the magma locked, using the as a sink source to lock code with the with the mag machine, and that I would take cans of mag.

Oh, no. I’m sorry. Ted Whitfield was the music editor with a guy named Carl Koller. KLA. Brilliant. I think he’s retired now. So I would take mag over to the dub stage. I drive over to universal at the Alfred Hitchcock dubbing stage, and at the time you take the mag and there was grease pencil marks on the mag to lock it up to the film, and then they would play the mag and I would sit there with John Hughes and Deedee Allen, this amazing woman who was a music editor, a film editor, I’m sorry, film editor.

She had cut The Hustler, Bonnie and Clyde, Dog Day, Afternoon Reds. You know, a lot of Paul Newman Warren Beatty films. And I would sit there and I didn’t know anything about this. I wasn’t I never had film training. And I’m sitting there and I just Keith wasn’t really into going. So I would go for him and I would take notes and I would bring a cue.

And then here DD and John Hughes arguing with one another, because what she wanted to do was make a 90 minute film, and he wanted a 2.5 hour film, and they would argue between them, or she would shout out to me when she heard something in a cue that was disturbing to her, and she’d say, for on daily.

And I would jump out of my chair and she’d say, music never gets in the way of dialog. Have your orchestra to record that cue. And then we got to know each other. And she was just wonderful to me. I mean, she knew that I was doing my best, and she was willing, being willing enough to to give me some insight in training.

And I was very grateful for that. I have to I have to pause and just say, as a Gen Xers who grew up in this time period, these films, this music, it’s fascinating to hear some of what was going on in, you know, behind the scenes of some of the stuff that I literally grew up on. And that film still works.

John Hughes I got to know him a little bit, but he wrote films on how kids spoke to one another. He knew how to write the dialog, you know, that’s why it still works today for kids. And then for you coming from the East Coast. What were your impressions of California? I love California. I had been commuting. I had started commuting at that point on a regular basis.

Things were always more organized in California. You had better drum kits. You had better microphone selections. You had the studios were a lot more manicured. You know, they were well kept. I mean, Electric Lady was great, but, you know, we had an old drum kit and, you know, if Bernard Purdie tweaked it and sounded great and played it, but, you know, you had to really work it.

Mike selections, outboard equipment. But it was Hollywood and it was film. In fact, the first my first experience out here in film was Giorgio had just been scouring the world for footage from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, and he created a score. He reassembled the film. He found outtakes from all these theaters around the world, and he assembled the film.

He re-edited the film, made it longer and did it in sepia tone, and made this modern soundtrack. He had mixed it to Sony 3320 four’s The Crew, Dave Concours and Steve Bose both worked at Disney until they retired. We took two Sony 3320 fours to the Impasse Studios in Beverly Hills, the Academy of Motion Pictures. They’re huge studio screening facility in Beverly Hills and took the Sony 3324 with a multi-channel audio.

I can’t remember the format now. It wasn’t five. We weren’t at five one yet, but we were in some LCR. Maybe maybe four channel or four channel format at the time, and they brought two Sony 3320 fours to lock up to the projector for the film. And it was the first time that they had played digital soundtrack back for a film, for his soundtrack, for his, for his version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and the People Who I saw James Coburn, Dana Andrews, Carol Lindley.

It was old Hollywood man. I had to get a tuxedo and sit in the audience. It was it was fascinating to me. So I got bit. I mean, I saw this and I said, this is where it all happens. And at the time I was really fascinated with C++ programing technology. I used to carry them with me. The White Papers by Andy Maurer from Lucasfilm, who was working then on the editors.

Yeah, and Giorgio was ready to buy, I don’t know, I don’t know how many attitudes, and he never got them. But this is what eventually turned into Sonic Solutions, you know, with Bob, Doris and Mary. We were at the advent of that because Giorgio was a digital fanatic. He was working with Sound Stream. He was working with all kinds of digital formats before the 30s.

324 came out. Is it accurate to say that it was Keith that was responsible for kind of getting you to come over to California in the first place? Oh, absolutely. Okay. It was Keith and Richie Zito. Okay. And Dave Concourse, those three guys were the guys who, you know, when I got out here, they just welcomed me out here.

And and, I mean, it was just, you know, going up to Giorgio’s house and Truesdale, you know, he had a studio in the house as well. It was just where Hollywood met music, where it had gone into this, this new phase. And I was very interested in music for film. And tell me from wrong about my timing here.

You know, MTV was thriving in the 80s. There was the music and film aspects of that, coupled with, you know, the timing of John Hughes films and you’re close. Yeah, it was pretty close in terms of of where they both fell in the world of music and video at the time. The, the labels, as a, as I recall, only because I was a capital.

But, you know, they were negotiating to be able to use the artists music to promote videos on MTV. There was this whole issue about, you know, because they didn’t get paid royalties on that. Did you at any point think, okay, I’m done, I’m staying in California. I’m never going back. Or were you tempted to go back at all to to New York?

Well, I did go back. I mean, I kept an apartment in Brooklyn and I kept it a place at on Barren Boulevard at the Oakwood, which was owned by Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss. I learned the Oakwood corporate apartments were owned by them. That’s what I had heard. So I kept a studio apartment here in LA. People just have to send me a plane ticket now.

Come. Okay. And I the audience is probably like, how do you know the Oakwood corporate Apartments? The only reason I know that is because as a drummer in the early 90s, I was at Ocean Way recording a record with Larry Hersch. Yeah. Stayed at the Oakland Corporate apartments. Larry Hirsch and I both worked on crowded House, I think.

Yeah, he produced this, my high school band from New Mexico that we, you know, we moved up to San Francisco, got a record deal with Imago in New York, and then Larry produced the record. Wow. Amago. Yeah, there you go. You know, it’s just amazing what it’s come to now. But then it was there were a lot of boutique labels.

There were still a lot of very powerful characters around in the industry who were music centric, who were artists centric, searching for, you know, the next whatever. I was always looking for bands, so, you know, but when I came out here, I was fascinated with with Los Angeles because music thrived here, because of film and television. There was always there was always an outlet.

There was always a place for it. I remember when Diane Warren had her studio up on, I think it was on Sunset Boulevard, where she had a cassette machine, a microphone and a keyboard, and she would just work like crazy and write great songs. They were they were incubator pockets here. But there was there was an interaction between music and film and TV, the video world, and it was essential to find a great soundtrack for a film.

Your experiences in Los Angeles at that time versus New York was was there. I mean, obviously there are cultural differences. Naturally there would be. But were there mentality differences about music or film? Were there differences between the two coasts in that way? Yeah, when I worked on I worked on soundtracks with Larry Rosen and Dave Grusin. Would I work on with them Bobby Deerfield and Al Pacino movie about racing.

It would maybe be 1 or 2 songs for a film. It wasn’t score. Music score wasn’t really done out of New York. You know, at that point, it was always done at the soundstage. He had stage em at Paramount. You had soundstages at the major film studios, Columbia or Sony. Later Sony. Fox had scoring stages, you know, so, you know, doing anywhere between 70 and 120 pieces, you know, for film scores.

This is before a lot of it went out of the country. Right? I saw a lot of it go out of the country because of, you know, people trying to skirt around union issues, you know, because they didn’t want to pay re-use rights for, for movie score. And wasn’t it going to like Prague, Prague, Hungary, you could buy out the LSO, the London Symphony, you know, you didn’t have to pay because because what happened here was what how many of the fantastic musicians we have in Los Angeles survived and and fed their families and educated their children was because of special payments.

So whenever they would play on a film score through the union and the deal with the union unions and the film studios was that they had to pay special payments. And there were there were reuse rights and things like that for the music. So these the musicians got special payments. They wanted all that to stop. They wanted a one and done and a buyout.

You know, they don’t want to have to pay for the administration of the contract. On the film side, they didn’t want to have to pay unions. They wanted to get around it. There’s was an amazing woman who did it for years out here, Sandy de Crescent, who was just one of the biggest film contractors out here for film music.

And, you know, I saw that all impacted while I was at capital. I never supported it because, you know, we were a music studio and we supported our musicians, but it was very difficult and it impacted the studio business out here, the recording studio business. Can you talk about capital and how that came to be for you? So it was in 1990.

I was working in New York. I had got a gotten a call from the head of human resources here at capital, and I have been working as an independent contractor at Capital Studios from 85 for about five years, maybe did a lot of records, knew the entire staff was very friendly with the tech department studio manager at the time, but I was booking it like crazy with a lot of different people.

So I get a call from the head of human resources says, you know, your name came up in a staff meeting. The studio director had left and they were looking to make some changes, and they were looking to see who they could bring in to be able to put a new face on the studio. Now, studio B was the same.

It was in the 1868. Great room, great mic collection, great outboard gear. Studio A was being rebuilt and it was being remodeled. They put an ever in there. They put a 72 and put never and studio C, I had mixed I don’t know how I did two Oingo Boingo records in there with Danny Elfman and Steve Bartek had an 8108.

A Neve 8108 wasn’t my favorite console, but they had enough outboard gear that I can make it sound like music. They had Uri A13 in the wall. Not my favorite, but I worked with near fields and whatever, and most of it was analog anyway, so it was a lot easier to work with. So I came out, I interviewed the interview went pretty quickly actually, and they said, well, what would you want to do?

And we talked some money and when can you start? I think I interviewed in September. I got married in October. I had found out that right before I got married, that they wanted me to come out and start December 1st. And it was it was a staff choice more than anything else. They they wanted someone who knew the staff well and had an idea of a direction for the studio.

They asked me what my vision was. I said, I want to rebuild studio C. I said, I think that studio C needs a major update, and I wanted to put at the time I was talking about an SSL because I had mixed a lot on on SSL 4000, and I was interested in putting an SSL. They said, well, yeah.

So they asked me and they asked me three years later I got the I got I got the console, but not the SSL. At any rate, I came in December 1st and we just started and I had everything. I had the three studios, I had six editing suites and two mastering rooms, and I had the archives from North America.

I had 250,000 original masters in Glendale that I was responsible for. And what was your official title? Director eventually become vice president, but director. So I got to work. But Joe Smith was the guy who actually hired me, who was the president CEO of capital at the time. You might know him from Warner Brothers and lecturer. Joe signed the Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers.

I mean, Joe was a legend. And I asked him, I said, listen, I said, I’ll take the position. I said, but I still got to make records. I said, I can’t just do this. Yeah. He says he says, look, I’ll tell you what, you can do it. He says, just don’t blindside me. He says, let me know what’s going on.

I said, you got it. And that’s the way I worked for the 11 years now. Joe left six months into my tenure here at Capitol, and Charles Koppelman came in from New York, and it was a whole new crew, whole new president. Hale Milgrom was the president at the time when I got here, loved Hale, and then it was all new.

So I was on my own, but it was different. I had to figure out now how to run a business. It was a $5 million a year business. Mastering was really running the business at the time because we were doing mastering for catalog special markets, all the associated labels, whether it was making cassette masters, CDs, whatever, vinyl, whatever, whatever was necessary we were doing for the company.

And because we had the archive, it was easy to do. They didn’t have to send it outside to any place and run the risk of losing the master. And we were doing pre-planned quality control for our Jacksonville plant, where we had a vinyl plant. All of it was new, and what was really knew was that I said, well, I want to get money to build the room.

Well, now I had to go through a whole corporate mission gas to be able to get money. And I said, well, how do I do that? And they said, well, you got to fill a capital expenditure request and you got to show ROI. I said, what’s ROI right? And how are you going to do it? I got on it.

They had a management training program here, and I was I was tutored by a Harvard MBA and I could read a PNL so profit and loss statement, and he would help me put a business plan together. I did the first ever business plan for Capitol Records Studios, since it was built in the tower of 19, opened in 56.

It opened on my birthday, February 22nd, 1956. It was the day, not the year. So it was fortuitous. I was here. And then I started learning these things about these echo chambers. And I had a research to history. And then I developed this relationship with Les Paul, and I learned a lot from him and how he and Jack Edwards designed the studios and, you know, and then Nat King Colts piano and whatever.

I mean, there were all kinds of things here, the legendary mic collection. But I had a great tech staff, an amazing tech staff, and Jeff Minnick was the chief engineer at the time, brilliant chief engineer. But everybody was so skilled here. Alberto Cornell was the guy who managed to take care of all the cutting lathes, all the analog tape machines, and the entire capital Mike collection.

He knew how to service all these microphones. Everything was brilliant. I had a hacker here, Denny Thomas, who could, you know, when new, new. All this new digital technology started coming in and how to manage the computer system. I had the first Apple network at Capitol Studios, and we had the first sonic solution system, network SDI set up.

It’s amazing to me, you know, like if you look back at where you started at Broadway, right? And then to be like running the show essentially at Capitol, but I did I tell you who the first artist I hosted was? I don’t think so. Frank Sinatra I got a call from Don Rubin, who worked with with Charles Koppelman and said, you know, we’re bringing in Frank Sinatra.

Phil Ramone’s going to give you a call. I had known Phil from New York. Sure enough, Phil called and it was like, hey, man, I’m bringing in Sinatra, man. I said, I heard, I said, what do you need? And he said, well, I’m going to use this new technology that George Lucas developed called Eden because we’re going to be doing some overdubs from around the world.

I said, okay, so I contacted Tom Kobayashi and Dave Gustafson, and we installed six channels of Eden ISDN, and we were recording from all around the world. I said, what else do you need? I got to build a booth for the old man. I said, what do you mean, a booth? He says, you want a vocal booth? I said, well, we have one.

And he says, I’m going to build a special one. So we designed eight Go Bose, which still exists there, one with a door diagonally cut roof with the air conditioning attenuation so we can get air in it without noise. And we built a booth. Frank came in the first night and said, get me the hell out of here.

I’m going to be out there with. So.

Yeah, you got triple scale musicians, full orchestra. Yeah, that was the Trial by Fire and then oh, I so I said to fill, I said, I said, are you going to engineer it. He said no he says I said do you have an engineer. He says no. Who you got in mind? I guess he thought it might, I might have said me, but I said, but the guy who gets the most amazing big band sound out of capital is Al Schmidt.

Yeah, I said, he’s going to be. He’s going to be a guy. He said, I never worked with al got a number. I said, yeah, so that was a marriage made in heaven. There’s an East Coast personnel influx that there’s you. Phil. Bill Smith is from New York. Bill, bill, bill brought in Steve Genoa and then Paula Salvatore, who was a studio manager.

She’s from Rhode Island. Right. So an Italian and then Koppelman coming in. He was from New York, Charles Koppelman and Al and who would work a ton with Tommy Mottola, Tommy LiPuma, Tommy LiPuma. My mistake. Al and Tommy LiPuma. Yeah. Tommy Mottola is from from the the record company guy. Yeah. Champion entertainment. When I worked with him, I did a lot of stuff for Tommy at Electric Lady with Kid Creole and the coconuts.

That’s that’s funny that you even bring that up. That was a conversation we literally had at an event I was at last night. Somebody was like, it’s kid, kid. And somebody was like, kid krill and the coconuts. That literally came up last night. So it’s strange to even hear you say that now. August Arnell. Yeah. Who first took me to London working at Pete Townsend Studio LP Island with two Russian Princes.

That’s a whole separate podcast. How long did this run at Capitol last 11 years. Did you enjoy that, that position? There were times when I did really love it, and then there were times when it was really difficult. The corporate side was hard. I had a union, I had the IBEW who were put into Capitol in 1942 because they needed a union as capital was making videos for the military.

So you had to be a union shop? Yeah, it’s the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which was odd one, but it was the same one that they had at CBS out here, too, and in New York was IBEW. So I had to negotiate for collective bargaining agreements on behalf of capital EMI. So when you’re doing that, it’s it’s very delicate and working with your, your staff.

Now, the good news, the good news behind that was I was happy to pay people a fair wage because they were getting paid more than any of the other engineers at music recording studios between New York and LA. So I was able to pay health benefits. They got all the privileges. I made sure that they had the same privileges as every other capital employee was getting, because I didn’t want people to be coming to work sick.

I didn’t want their families to be sick. I want to make sure they were taken care of and that they had enough money to get to work. The downside of it was that there was always this comparison that engineers would have a comparison to the independent contractors, who would be making 2000, 500, 3000 a day, you know, and they weren’t.

So they were getting a wage, but they were getting time and half after eight hours, double time after 12. If they didn’t get a break, a ten hour break in between sessions, they got double time the whole next day, not realizing this, that as an independent contractor, you got to buy your own health insurance. You know, you got to be searching for work.

You got to have pay people to represent you, you know, recording engineer managers. What was I paying Jim at the time? I think he was getting 15%. Unlike many of the people I’ve interviewed, you’ve seen it from so many different sides. You know, the artistic side, the business side and all the machinations that go on in these complex situations.

I mean, I think if we added it up education wise, you know, you would be a PhD. Yes. I also had a label. Can you talk about that? And what what was the decision to get into that side of it? Desperation.

I was so upset because I wanted to start a label out of the studios as as an indie with the then president, who I won’t mention, but I went to him and said I wanted to start a label. I was about 44 years old, and he said to me, you’re too old. And I sent him to old. Well, you know, I’m a New Yorker, I’m a Sicilian.

You tell me I’m too old. You tell me I can’t do it, then I’m going to work. So I said, how am I going to do it? We had a catalog producer who was also. He was the photo archivist for Capitol Records, which if you go into Capitol Records now, they have a gallery there. Of these 30 by 32.25 hustle, blood black and whites of all Sinatra, Dean Martin, Gene Vincent and the blue caps that I created this gallery.

And Brad Benedict was the guy, and he was producing these remarkable catalog box sets with beautiful artwork. He had done the Ultra Lounge series for capital, and he had these bands, neo swing bands. Now we know them as neo swing, but they were doing music like those records and he said, would you be interested? And I said, yes.

So the first band he brought me was a surf band at a lagoon beach. I loved them, they were great. It was like the lead singer sounded like. It was kind of like Roy Orbison meets Marty Robbins with a surf band behind him with a steel guitar. They were called The Blue Hawaiians, and they played the Lava Lounge here in Hollywood, and people like Quentin Tarantino and John Travolta and all these people come and see them.

It was this big cult thing going on. So that’s the first band we did. And then he said, I got this other band. So we went raiding the Derby, and during the time of what would be the swingers period, and there was this band called Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Yeah, people were lining up to see them two hours before just to get swing dance lessons before they started the night, because the movie had come out swingers with Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.

So I brought my. Then I had a manager and he was also a dear friend, my friend Gary Stamper, who manages Tchad Blake and Mitchell Froom because we met together, because we didn’t get to there, but we didn’t talk about crowded House. That’s how I met Gary and how I wound up mixing don’t treatments over in that whole album.

I said, Gary, you got to see this. This is culturally, it’s infesting the culture. We’ve got the gap ad going on with Jump Jive and, well, with Brian Setzer. You know, Brian Setzer was going to do the Dirty Boogie without he was going to do this record. He wanted to do with Al Schmitt. I got a call from Hollywood Records.

Can you get him in there? So we got Brian Setzer in there was the Cherry Pop and Daddies and then Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. They were on the soundtrack for swingers. Would you me in a bottle makes three, but the record didn’t go anywhere. So I we meet them and we fall in love with the guys. There’s so much fun.

They worked their asses off. They were like eight guys, two vans and just touring their asses off. And I said, let’s bring them in the studio. So we brought them in the studio and they they could play and we cut Jumpin Jack. So Brad and I sat down and I said, you know, the horn parts are just doubled.

I said, they’re not broken out. There’s so much more that can be done with the right arranger. And he said, yeah, but I’ve been working with this guy Tom Peterson, not Cheap Trick, not the bass player for the sax player from The Tonight Show will work with Doc Severinsen and Tommy Newsom. And he we brought Tommen and Tom started arranging the horns, and we brought in a couple of ringers with the guys.

The ringer, the the the guys stepped up, the band guys stepped up, and the ringers kind of like kept it loose. And we started cutting tracks. And I was doing the skunkworks at Capitol at night, and we wound up putting a record together. We did the record. We brought in an agent from then A love. The band went crazy, got the band bookings everywhere.

We did showcases for EMI because it was around the end of the year when we used to do plan check and meetings with the Brits, because it was still owned by the Brits. They loved it. We had this whole thing with the Pasadena Swing Swing Dance group, and we did it at the Hollywood Athletic Club and had this whole event.

It was it was just phenomenal. They went crazy. So we finished the record. We get it mastered. Doug Sax masters it. So we’re going to we’re going to manufacture 40,000 records. So I get a call from distribution and they say to me so we got a problem. I said what’s the problem. They said, we’re going to manufacture 40,000 records.

I said, why do we do we overbudget? And he said, no, we’re way below because the orders that are coming in are just like crazy. So we release it in February of 98 and it goes goal by May. So we sell 500,000 by May. Wow. And it just like out of the box. And I did this on a on a $100,000 investment of time.

So but time we got done. We had gross 7 million and we netted. We netted like I got a marketing and promotion around three 4 million for the company and EMI wanted it. But they had a change in management here and they, they wouldn’t give us a joint venture. So Gary took it over to Jimmy Ivy and Tom Whaley over at Interscope.

Yeah. And Jimmy says, let’s have it. You know, it’s market share. We’re going to have it. Tom Walley we already had a history with because when I mixed crowded House, Tom Walley was the A and R guy A capital, and Gary and Tom had a relationship. So we wound up moving. We already sold 500,000 records for EMI. We wound up moving to Interscope.

You know, stuff happens. But that was that was capital, you know, I mean, I, I just wasn’t gonna sit on my laurels and not make records. So what’s now on musicOMH? If you go on there, there’s about 100 titles on there, about 80% of those that I co-produced and mixed and recorded, and that includes some of the Big Bad Voodoo Daddy stuff.

We own the masters on those, and we wound up getting Ingrid, Lucy and the flying neutrinos. We had Steve Lucky and the Rhumba bums. We had all these characters, and most of those are covers and they’re really great covers. Johnny Reno and the Lounge Kings, we were doing really, really obscure covers. We were into, you know, everybody from John Phillips who wrote songs for Genevieve Weight and from The Mamas and the Papas.

Yeah. So at any rate, we if you go on the website, you see a lot of you hear a lot of this music. There’s snippets of everything on there and the artwork is phenomenal. That’s Brad, Brad, Brad, just brilliant art director and brilliant music guy, you know. And once again, just deepening your your exposure to the different facets of the music industry and growing your knowledge base of all of it.

It’s I just think it’s amazing. We’ve skimmed over a bunch of stuff. I know that there’s so many deeper, you know, valleys to explore, but I mean, holy crap. Yeah. And then I got into since capital, I’ve been in doing philanthropic work. I’ve been producing concerts with the family of Stephen Stills with Kristen and Stephen for Autism Speaks.

Right. Matt Asner and working trying to give back. But but you’re still actively working and doing stuff. Yeah. Does James Gadson record that’s coming out. We’ve been doing that. You know legendary fantastic drummer who who finally got to sing so doesn’t get out of your blood. You know it’ll never get out of my blood. You know, it’s like the old joke was, who’s a George Burns?

They asked him, George, when are you going to retire? He said, retire to what? You know. What are you going to do? Yeah. It’s funny, you know, my wife works the corporate gig and has for years. She’s going to retire in like three years. And, you know, I’ve been very up front. I’m like, what am I going to retire to?

There’s nothing to retire. I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m going to keep making records and mixing and recording, like, because it’s just I can’t see doing it any other way. So on a side note, I finished a four week course at Caltech in AI. I love that I was very fascinated with large language models and what they did, and to beget a better understanding of where this can go.

I’ve attended the Michael Milken Global Conference, attended for 11 years, and I’ve been around, you know, Elon and Kimball, Musk and people talking about, you know, how AI is going to affect the music industry, what to what to be aware of, what uses and what purposes it can have and what dangers are involved. What I learned was this.

I learned how to speak to large language models and find ways to have a desired outcome in terms of where it’s at for music is I’ve been very carefully watching legislation. I have people who were coming to me and sending me amazing songs, fictitious voice. They put in a couple of lines and a couple of melodies and that’s it.

And I said, can you send me the terms and conditions of what you’re using? And I finally got to know what’s going on, and I got to see Suno, and I get to read the terms and conditions which are written so broadly, they’re written so broadly that it’s hard to know who owns what. And if you’re educating AI with your work, how do you know what you own?

Now? I learned from, again, continuing my education at UCLA in film and production music. You got to be able to copyright. So if you don’t copyright your material before you put it into AI, you run the risk of not being able to claim make a claim to have standing in a court if something is stolen. I see now that the labels are making inroads to having associations with these different platforms.

I believe that it’s a it’s a great tool because we’ve all seen AI and audio and what it can do, and I love it. I love it as a tool, as a creative entity in terms of doing it as a fictional artist. I don’t believe it has a soul. And if that’s the case, I’m not so thrilled about it.

Now, I’ve heard what Doctor Dre has to say about it. You people who are not going to use AI, the same people who didn’t want to use drum machines and stuff like that. And I understand his point. However, I believe that you can use the AI as a tool, but what you learn in corporate are three letters, sire of your ass.

Always say, I bought a house and I’m going to lease it to someone. If I don’t have title to that house. You don’t have any rights. Well, it’s the same thing with music. You got to copyright your materials. So at the Name Show this past year, I got in front of five attorneys. I got to ask the only question at the end, and I said, listen, I said, it’s very rare that I have five attorneys that I can get in front of for free.

I said, so I have I have a question. I said, I read the terms and conditions for Suno. I said they’re written so broadly that one could make the claim that they have rights to my music. If I use it as a tool to program my melodies and my lyrics into. I said. However, it’s my understanding that the first the copyright gets the copyright.

If I copyright my material, my melody and my lyrics before I use the platform, would you represent me if I if they made a claim to challenge me on my release? Because what I want to do is use it as a tool for production ideas. I want to be able to use the melody, my melody and my lyrics to be able to come up with, you know what?

If I went more country with this? What if I went more punk? What if I went this direction or that direction? And I got production ideas from the AI platform and then used real musicians to go and rerecord it, and they said, absolutely, they would represent me. I said, I’d like to make a landmark case. I like to see a major artist be able to do this and use this as a tool and create something and have one of these platforms challenge it.

I’d like to see that happen to create some kind of boundary on this or and legal precedent and legal precedent. So you have statute. I mean, we all saw what happened with George Harrison, with Phil Spector, my sweet lord, you know, and how he went after him after he produced the record. Right. So, so it’s just it just fascinates me that, that people are so naive about this, that the, the creator public doesn’t really understand it go.

It’s all its new. It’s a platform. I mean, how many of us, when we get a new app, look at the read the, you know, terms and conditions and agree. Right. I think we all scroll past and hit, yes, I gotta have it, I gotta have it. So I want to I want to see it be used wisely.

I want to see it be used smartly and put thinks tanks together. Put a, you know, a creative group of people together to do this. But I also want to see musicians work because they think ensemble recording is what still makes the records that I grew up would still work today. My nephew, who’s who’s now 30 years old and teaches music he listens to, he’s listening to all the music that I grew up with, and it still works today because we cut performances.

We captured performances live on the floor, live on the floor, playing together, ensemble recording. The same reason. I also feel that there should be apprenticeships, apprenticeships in our profession, you know, which is why. Why when Editor Cherney came to me to start the Music Producers Guild, I was executive chairman for two years. This is what he myself, George Massenburg, Al Schmitt, so Ramon Chiccarelli, we all sat down and we talked about this.

We wanted to make sure that people had an environment where they can learn properly. Let me ask you this. Because of the vast amount of experience you’ve had in the time that you’ve been involved in our business, if you were to start today, like knowing what you know now, what are your thoughts on on the state of the audio professional today?

The producer, the engineer, the mixer, the mastering engineer, the Atmos person? Like what are your thoughts on the state of it all? Not everybody can do it because what happens is you have to have a personality. You have to have a personality to allow the creative personality within the room to develop and be able to communicate in a responsible way.

Not everybody’s qualified to do that. Some people are qualified to be in post-production for film, for audio and television, rerecording mixers, dialog editors, sound effects people. There’s a lot of places for audio other than music, okay? Some people, some people can do the music part of it. Well, if they know how to communicate with musicians, if they have a feel for music.

But not everybody, not everybody has that on what something’s supposed to sound like, you know? And. And is this the right sound? Is this the right kit sound for this song? Does it need drums? Does it? You know, when you hear these great stories about how these sounds developed, now we get all this YouTube stuff that, you know, people are talking about it.

Even in your interview that I heard, would you patch him last night? You know, he was talking about how he worked, you know, where they were doing ads. You know, they were doing jingles and then, you know, certain sounds to get how do you how do you develop these sounds? How do you learn a toolbox full of different ways?

There’s more than one way to get to the airport. You just got to figure out what color it is and the mind of the artist you’re working in and what past they want to take. And can you come up with something for them that is unique, that makes it stand out? I mean, one of the most fascinating artists to me who does it well is Beck.

And when I hear that the sort of sonic tapestry that he creates behind his narratives and how he has a cinematic effect and the way he works, it’s not dissimilar to what the Beatles were doing. I mean, the later records were really cinematic, and they grew up in that kind of world. They grew up because Abbey road was doing film scores and all kinds of stuff.

They were doing comedy records there. So, you know, when you have that exposure, how do you apply this and how do you somehow or another make this happen like a Danny Elfman? I mean, working with a Danny Elfman was was marvelous to work with Danny Elfman because he had a cinematic mind to making pop music. If you’re not going to retire and you have your choice of things to do, what are your favorite tasks or job or roles to play in the world of audio?

This. In this current day and age, I was thinking about being a comedy writer, actually.

I was told I was a funny guy by a very funny guy named Don Rickles. Yes, he asked me if I was a comedian. You know, I think you have to make your own path. It’s not like I do. I mix some atmos. I really don’t spend a lot of time in it. I’m more interested in songs. I’ve always been a song guy.

If I would have gotten any, made any other detour in this industry, I’d probably been on music publishing because I think that’s one of the most fascinating places to be working with songwriters. It’s all about the song, you know? It’s kind of sticking on the engineering perspective and your advice. Let’s just say you’re giving advice to me about the business side of being an audio professional.

What would you tell me if I wanted to continue to mix records or record records? What’s the piece of advice you know about the business that you would give to me? Running a recording studio like capital for 11 years? What I learned was you don’t invest into anything unless you know where you can get the business. So what’s important right now is there’s, you know, you go on these, these sites where they have all these engineers that advertise themselves and it’s all about network.

You got to have a network. You got to have a physical network because people don’t know who you are. You’re not going to get it. How I got crowded House was through Hugh Padiham recommending me. And and the fact that that was my biggest selling record because that went to number two single went to number two with Don’t Dream It’s Over and I got to mix that record with Mitchell Frome.

But it was it was true. Hugh and I, I did a gratitude for that. Now if you meet more established guys, you know, like the Hippodrome and the and the Bob Clare Mountains, they already have a legacy. They don’t necessarily need the advertising, but they need to be accessible. People need to know what you can contribute. What, why, why you what your to use a corporate term, a competitive strategic advantage to anyone else for you to be able to work with someone.

Are you more musical? Are you more technical? Are you? Do you just get sounds? Can you give direction to an artist and say, I love this? I think this is working. There’s nothing more exciting for me than to be in a studio with live musicians and getting a take and knowing it’s the take. When you sit there and you say, we’ve got it all, I have it.

If I cut this and this together, if I do this, I know we’ve got it and you’ve paid attention enough and you’ve done the preparation work and you know how to do that. I mean, all my work and making records was pre-production. Yeah, it was it was all doing that because what you want to do in the studio is you want to capture a moment in time.

Or as Phil Ramone once said to me, he says, Michael, he says, you know, as recording engineers, we record history. And that’s exactly what we do. We take a snapshot of a moment in time, a sonic moment in time, where we capture this artist in the wild. The frustrating thing to me is in my days as a musician, before I became an engineer, I came up in the world of preproduction, you know, spending weeks at Sur with Larry Hirsch or or Gil Norton and hammering through the songs beforehand before entering the studio.

And budget wise, that just seems those events happen less unless you have the right financial backing behind the project, always marketing and promotion spend. I took the gig at capital because I wanted to know why. Records I thought were good didn’t do well, and when I got into an R and I got into marketing meetings, I got to better understand it.

You know, it was really about having a strong manager and having a manager who understood how to market a record. And when you wonder when you understand that the marketing budget on a record where a lot of times what was happening in the 90s is records were being made and then dropped before they spent money marketing and promotion, because the marketing and promotion spend was at least 2 to 3 times the budget, the recording budget.

And you have people know how to do that and set it all up. It’s very difficult right now that, you know, with the traffic that we have in the internet to be able to, you know, somehow or another, break new music and get it above the roar of the user generated content that’s out there. Yeah. There’s so many more distractions, there’s so many more micro niches, and there’s so many different tracks of information and music and film and culture.

Well, okay, Michael, so two episodes of great information, such valuable lessons. I’m sure that people have taken away from this. It’s such an amazing career that you’ve had. That is by no means coming to an end yet you’re still on fire. Once again, I want to thank Jerry Stecker for introducing us. I’m so grateful to get to know you and hear more of your story.

And now I have things to go back to listen to that you’ve done over the years that I just want to revisit, and I’m so thankful to have you on. So thank you again for making an immense amount of time for me. I’m very grateful for the opportunity and we need to break some bread. We will break bread.

Absolutely. All right, Michael, will you take care and thank you again. Have a good day. You too. All right. Bye.

Matt: Scott, welcome to the podcast.

Scott: Great to be here.

Matt: All right, great to have you. let’s do the state of the state. Who are you? Where are you? And what do you consider yourself?

Scott: well, my name is Scott McDowell and I live here in San Francisco. and I guess I consider myself like I mean, it’s music, so it’s always confusing and complicated. I I co-own a recording studio, I produce records, I record records, I mix records, and for the last eight years I’ve had a part-time job doing music and a little sound design at a video game studio.

Matt: Awesome. We’re gonna get into that. And let’s get back into the beginning. Where where did you grow up?

Scott: Ha ha. I grew up in Novato, which is like North Marin. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Novato. It’s like I feel like if Petaluma and Novato were switched at birth, somehow Novato ended up in Marin Petaluma is in Sonoma. but I’m just below Petaluma. and I lived there for the first eighteen years of my life and then and then went to Boston for college. and moved back here and have just lived in the city ever since.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Did you did you go to Berkeley School of Music? Okay. Did you graduate?

Scott: I did, yeah. Yeah. I good question. I finished my time at Berkeley. I had like 50, like one semester of credits, gen ed credits that I still needed to transfer over, that I also finished here at SF Community College. And I never transferred them back. I just got busy working on studio stuff and no one’s ever asked. So

Matt: There it is. I ask because, you know, I know that people, there’s a large amount of people. Well, I don’t know what the percentage is. I don’t want to make a broad statement, but there’s a percentage of people that go to Berkeley School of Music and not they don’t graduate because a lot of them leave to go on the road with people because they just get recruited.

Scott: The the joke at the time when I was there was if you stick around long enough to graduate, maybe you haven’t made it. Yeah. Which I think is especially true, probably for performers. less so for like music tech stuff, like recording engineering and and music synth and stuff. But definitely performers, so many of my friends who have gone on to be really successful, a lot of them, that’s how that was their track.

Matt: Maybe you’re not that good, right? Y do you have siblings?

Scott: I have a sister who lives in Orange County. She’s two years younger than me. And then about halfway through my childhood, I’ve got two step siblings. my stepbrother is the same age as me. and my stepsister’s four years younger than me, and they’re all awesome.

Matt: Can you talk a little bit about your parents and were they the ones who exposed you to music or technology or did that come from other people?

Scott: Yeah, definitely. my mom, my mom worked at Kaiser, but she early on was like pretty computer savvy, pretty tech savvy. she the first digital pharmacy for Kaiser, my mom set that up in Napa in the late 80s. and at some point in the 80s, she got an Apple IIE. And that was the first computer in our house, which, you know, it’s funny because like an Apple IIE is like an Not a pretty powerful computer, but I mean I I was playing with it. I was goofing around with it. I was playing Karatika, some karate game. And and I remember taking a summer school program where I learned how to program like a really goofy word game for the Apple IIe. So I think I got a lot of my early like tech stuff and like we we upgraded from there. We got different Macs. I I got into computers thanks to my mom. And then my dad, this is crazy. My dad was a broadcast engineer. he worked here in the city at KPIX. And so for most of my childhood, trips into the city to hang out at the station were pretty normal. And I never intended to follow in my dad’s footsteps. I mean, I I grew up having an understanding of like how video editing worked, and how a little bit about how TV production worked. and even like I would play with the big cameras, the the big ones that had like motorcycle handlebars on them.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Scott: and my dad taught me how to focus and how to like raise and lower and I would I would do all kinds of stuff. And then it wasn’t until I was at Berkeley in Boston, doing a mix project. And my dad came to visit one time. And I remember he was sitting in the in the mix room with me, like just hanging out, letting me work. and I looked over at him and I saw my dad in front of this rack of gear and I realized, no, this is my dad’s natural space. I’ve I’ve become my dad. Like this is I mean, and to be fair, broadcast is very different from what we do. but honestly on the grand scheme of things, it’s kinda not.

Matt: Yeah. So yeah, a lot of crossover, a lot of similarities. It’s still still audio, you know. did your dad give you advice or did he have you know suggestions about, well, you maybe you want to come over to broadcast and

Scott: Yeah. No, I mean, he definitely tried to talk me out of music. he was he was not super keen. I mean, he wasn’t he didn’t stand in my way, but he was like, if you’re doing that, that’s that’s you, you’re on your own. and when I first moved to town, I remember there was one thing, there was there was one major like nepotism moment, which was I met I forget his name now. my gosh. I’m gonna blame that on brain damage. there was a tech for the dead that I met through like Friends. And he was doing football games where he would work as like just like a local on the football games. And I was like, my dad used to do that. I really want to do that. And my dad, I’d asked him and he could not find a role for me. either he was lying or he just didn’t have the contacts. But this guy, I want to say his name was Jeff, but I don’t think that’s right. This guy was like, Yeah, no problem. And like the next weekend, I was at a Niners game, like on the side of the field. and then I think I because of my dad’s status in the union. I got called almost every week because I was legacy status in the union. And I remember like a lot of the people were very upset with me. I that job for me only lasted a year. They were very upset because I got called more than I deserved. and I guess because I had this special legacy status. thanks to my dad. But that was about it. That was the major crossover, was like working Niners games and and it wasn’t really audio. I mean, I I was kind of shadowing the A2 and setting up the mics and learning how they like capture surround audience, you know, like crowd sounds and stuff like that. and I always wanted to be the guy holding the parabolic mic, because that’s especially by the time I was there, it was wireless. It was pretty chill gig, as my dad would describe it. You just point it at the ball and try to get the sounds of bones breaking when they crash together. But but they again because because the the the union rep

Matt: Yeah.

Scott: At the games, I would show up and it would be like like CBS or Fox Sports, whatever would like assign me to be like A2. And then the guy would be like, nah, you’re back on handheld. And handheld was there was a camera that a guy who would run up and down the length of field, like right on the sidelines. And it was probably he had had like a cable that was like as thick as my thumb and maybe 200 yards long. And my job was to run around behind this guy over, under, over, under, over, letting it in, letting it out, letting in, letting it out. And it was a frantic job. I got hit by a couple balls. and it’s pretty wild. It was really fun to be outside and get paid pretty well, but but I got really good overunder.

Matt: I’ve seen I’ve seen that person on on watching, you know, games and always wondered, how does one wind up in that position? No, I know I know. can you talk about when your first awareness of record production or let me rephrase that? Talk about when record production started to first pique your interest and when you started to ask the questions like, How is this made? What am I hearing? What what

Scott: Ha ha Yeah. you know, man, it’s hard to say. I mean, I had I had some like goofy ska bands in high school because it was the 90s. and then I remember I ended up through a teacher at my school, I ended up getting an internship at a recording studio in Belmar & Keys in Novato. and it didn’t go very well because the guy

Matt: Even work. Mm-hmm.

Scott: Which I totally understand as an adult now. The guy was a bit flaky and would not always tell me when he was coming or when he wasn’t coming. And I think he went on the road with some bands. So it was I ended up finding a different internship after trying on four for four months to get something consistent going with this guy. but but it’s hard to s it’s hard to say that that didn’t affect my understanding. Cause I mean, I spent a handful of time, you know, a handful of hours in the studio watching some records get made. In fact, even one of like my friends’ bands that would play at the Phoenix and Petaluma with me, they came through and spent a couple like a weekend making a record. so I definitely got a sense at that point, but I wasn’t thinking of that really as something I wanted to do. It was just an internship, just something somewhere to learn some stuff. and it wasn’t until in college, in my early twenties, and I didn’t really move to Boston until I was twenty. and I was I went just thinking I’d be a trumpet performer. I played trumpet. and I gave myself a hernia, had an operation, and it did not dot it did not turn out as I wanted. I don’t play trumpet anymore.

Matt: I was gonna sweat, it didn’t work out as you you mean the hernia didn’t work out as you wanted?

Scott: Yeah, well they’re t they the the surgeon, you know, told me like, yeah, a couple of months and you’ll be back to plan like nothing and that’s not how it played out.

Matt: I’m sorry, can can you clarify what kind of hernia? Because there’s mul multiple kinds.

Scott: Yeah. I had an in groinal hernia. and and so, I mean, I don’t want to get into the the the gross details, but there was you know the the cough test. I I did not pass the cough test. When you turn your head and cough, it was filling up. and that’s your intestines in a place where they’re not supposed to be. that’s what that test is about. And and I was playing trumpet at that point I I put off having surgery for like another

Matt: shit.

Scott: Two years maybe, because I was like, I’m about to go to music school. I got a lot of playing to do. And it just got worse and worse and worse. And so I finally got it, you know, fixed up and and I tried to play. And after three months, I tried to play and it was really painful. And I waited a little longer and I tried to play and it was really painful. And I ultimately was like, all right, what am I doing with my life? And I being at Berkeley, you know, I think I my time before I got to Berkeley, I was doing web development. I was pretty tech savvy, but I but music. And technology were very separate things for me. Music was my escape from goofing around on computers, and computers was like a very nerdy endeavor that didn’t really involve music. And I, you know, my friends who played music never really got the web dev stuff I was doing, database integration. They weren’t excited about it at all. And but then I got to Berkeley, and I think I made this decision to go to Berkeley to be like, I don’t want to do I don’t like.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Scott: Tech, I don’t love this. I’m happier. You know, the social aspect of music and the community aspect of music was what I loved. So I I get to Berkeley and then I realized right away, like, my gosh, music’s been swallowed up by computers. And it’s funny to say that now because my gosh, it’s swallowing it even more. But in 2000, 2001, it was this like gotcha moment where I’m I’m at music school and realizing like tech is such a big part of all this. And I think I realized, like, I am, you know, I had. I had interned an Autodesk. I had had an intern at another place doing web development. I was working as an IT person at a nonprofit in Cambridge while I was the the first two semesters in Boston. and actually I ended up running the website for the music tech department or for the MPE department, the music production engineering department at Berkeley. so I was like, maybe I should just put these together. Like that’s let’s see. I think I have the right brain. you know, I can, I can, I can bop. you know, and get my way around some core changes. And also, you know, I’m pretty tech savvy and I’m not intimidated by by big stacks of technology layered together to make stuff happen. So maybe I could figure this out. And I I think that was right, because honestly, I don’t think I was that great of a trumpet player. I mean, I was still pretty young, but I once I dove headfirst into recording engineering, and I mean it. For me, it wasn’t like this thing I had been pursuing. It was just all of a sudden, I’m like halfway through college, I’m like, this is what I do now. And I dove all in and did it as much as I could. And, you know, I’m I’m living in San Francisco, putting avocado on my burritos, and I’m really proud of the work I do. So

Matt: You yeah, you know that you’re you’re you’re living pretty well if you’re putting avocado on your burrito, right? okay, so how how did you find your way to San Francisco? I mean, obviously the proximity to you know, Nevado and San Francisco are not that far from one another. so there’s obviously the proximity part. Your dad used to work in the city at KPIX. So

Scott: Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: What made you decide to come back to the West Coast as opposed to exploring the East Coast?

Scott: Yeah, well, actually, yo, the plan was New York. the whole time I was in Boston, I think like subconsciously for me, Boston was New York on training wheels. I was just so excited to move into the big city. and actually when I after surgery, when I moved back to Boston and dove head first into the MP and E department, I had a by that point I had friends who were graduating and a lot of them moved to New York. And I set up a lot of my my class schedule so that I would always have a three day weekend. And like at least once a month, I would take the Chinatown bus from Boston to New York. The Chinatown bus is this crazy thing that exists on the East Coast where from Chinatown to Chinatown you can take these dirt cheap buses. and they kind of run almost 24 hours a day, and there there are times where some suspect things happen on the bus. But you know, you’re a kid and you’re just like, hey, I can get to New York for less than $10. Let’s go. and I so I would go down to New York and spend a lot of time there. and I had a friend, one of my one of my good buddies who was an inspiration for me at the time, was interning at right track, was what it was called at the time. I forget what right track became. and I was I would hang out at right track, I would hang out with him, I would hang out with other friends. Eric Andre was a friend of mine. I would crash with him quite a bit in New York. and I was ready for New York. And then I remember it was I it’s funny because people keep asking me if I’m a member of AES, and I keep just not signing up, but I feel like I should be a member of AES. But I went to like I got a a sponsorship as a student to come to an AS conference here in San Francisco while living in Boston, my senior year. And I so I was like, hey, free trip home. Let’s go. And I remember at AES, I went up to some producer. man. Wow, I haven’t thought of that name in a long time. I’m for blanking on his name, but he was a big shot. Phil Ramon. Phil Ramone. I went up to Phil Ramon and was like, hey man, I I, you know, I am at Berkeley. I’m about to finish. And I’ve been thinking I want to move to New York, but at that time I was also starting to realize like my friends living in New York, they were interning at studios for like several years, making nothing.

Matt: Yeah.

Scott: And having to pay rent, like I mean, I don’t want to t I don’t want to tell this story, but like this might I mean if if do you edit this? Great, great, cool. I’m gonna this you probably doesn’t fit, but I’m gonna share it with you because it’s wild. Eric Andre, my last summer in Boston. Eric Andre, like his parents as a graduation present had

Matt: Yeah. Like like crazy.

Scott: He just they gave him a lease for like, I don’t know, eight months or something in his apartment in in Manhattan. And I think Upper East Side, I think. And he just leased it out for like four or five months to someone else and was basically homeless, sleeping in Central Park, showering at the Y. I would go hang out and like cause you know, he was coming up in the comedy world. he was a bass player at Berkeley, by the way. He was coming up in the comedy world. And then like the end of the night, I would like go back with my friend and it we’d be like with Eric and he’d be like, All right, guys, bye. Like, good luck, dude. Like, I don’t know where he’s gonna sleep. I can’t invite you to my friend’s place. It’s not my place to invite you, you know. It was but I mean, by the end of the year, he was regularly getting paid to go out of Manhattan and do stand-up gigs. so I’m looking at this and I’m like, well, that was clever because his parents paid his lease for a year and he was able to find a way to like make a small amount of money and make this work for him. I Wasn’t sure how I was gonna make Manhattan work for me financially. And I got scared and and I started thinking like these thoughts. And so, okay, back to my story. Phil Ramon. I hit Phil Ramon up and I say, Hey man, I’m thinking about moving to New York, but I’m starting to think like I’m gonna be a small fish in a big sea and it seems really expensive. And I’m looking at friends who are all just like kind of being exploited in these studio internships where they’re working. Full time, like overtime, not getting much for it, definitely not earning a living. and I don’t know how long I can make that last or how I’m gonna find time to pursue opportunities while doing that. And he says to me, Yo, I told my own son not to move to New York. And so he’s moving somewhere else. Go somewhere where there’s a music scene and you can make it work. And I that that was it. It hit really hard. It was exactly I think I think I was ready to hear that. It was what I needed to hear. And I did a full about face where no, I’m not moving to New York. And so then I was looking at I applied to Austin City College, to Portland City College, Community College, and San Francisco City College. to all three of them. And I mean, got into all of them because like obviously admissions are pretty easy at schools like that. And then at the last minute, I shipped everything to Portland. Came home and came into the city, went to a pub quiz and was like, what am I doing? I don’t want to live in Portland. I’ve always Had a love affair with San Francisco. I want to live in SF. And went out the next week and got this apartment that I live in still. rent control dating back to 2006, which is crazy. But it was a really wild time in SF, you know, the dot-com boom one had like failed. iPhones didn’t exist yet. So San Francisco was like a very affordable, wild, crazy place with a really cool music scene and all sorts of artists.

Matt: Well you’re

Scott: And I moved in at the right time and you know, flew up to Portland and put everything in a U Haul and came right back here to this apartment. And I’ve been rocking ever since.

Matt: Okay, so as a parent I have to ask, were your parents like, What the fuck are you doing?

Scott: Ha ha. Yeah, totally. And my grandmother, my grandmother lived in Portland. She was so mad at me. She was so upset that I wasn’t going to move there. My parents were definitely confused. At that time, you know, I mean, they were happy that I was going to stay in the bay, because at that time they still both lived in Marin. now I’m I’m unanchored. Everybody’s left the bay. I’m all that’s left. But but yeah, long run, I think they were both happy that I was gonna be closer to them. But but they were definitely like Okay, you went to music school, you have all this college debt. what? Figure yourself out, man.

Matt: Alright, get your shit together, son.

Scott: But again, it worked out. Cause like I said, being being a slightly bigger fish in a much smaller sea, I I had a sense that I would be able to like claw my way up and get to doing work sooner. and I mean it it while I was at city college, I got an internship at SF Soundworks. That was a bit of a bust. I don’t want to throw them I don’t wanna talk a bunch of bad stuff about that that place or that guy. but it was not a very it was a pretty traumatic experience. And I remember getting fired. And the day I got fired, I went up to John Vanderslice. he was playing at the independent right over the hill. and I went up to him and I was like, and I didn’t tell him I had just gotten fired, but I said, Look, I do not like the vibe at SF Soundworks. I really want to come work for you, a tiny. Like, what do I gotta do? How do I get my foot in the door? And at the time he said, I don’t take interns, but you should call this guy Justin Phelps. Call him up. He’s awesome. He said, this was the words he said at the time, which JV is full of a lot of crazy things that he says. And I’ve have gotten getting closer to him after that. I also realized don’t take him as word of face value ever. but he said, the only engineer outside of Tiny I’ll ever work with is Justin Phelps. I know, I know. but he loves to say really bold things. so I end up.

Matt: That’s not true. John. Come on.

Scott: Working for Justin, and then Justin had and Jaimeson Durr had just taken over Studio C at Hyde Street. and then Justin was like, You should also intern at Hyde. So I was interning at Hyde Street two days a week, and then two days a week I was interning with Justin and Jaimeson in Studio C. And then after a year, and that’s a wild story, they just made me a partner. and I couldn’t believe it. I thought actually I thought I was getting, I’ll tell the story quickly. I thought I was getting fired. it was the first time I messed up. in the entire year, I was so determined to make it work and just be the best intern they’d ever had. I remember six months earlier, Justin was having a kid, and I remember overhearing a conversation just around the corner where Justin and Jaimeson were like, we need to bring on another partner. We gotta find someone who’s a good fit because I’m gonna be working less and the calendar’s not gonna be as full. And I’m thinking, man, if they bring another partner in here, how am I ever going to get dates on the calendar? so I was determined for the next six months to never let there be an open day on the calendar. Like, whatever I could do, I would just work for free. I would usually try to get people to pay for the studio time, but work for free. Sometimes I would even just like, I’ll split the studio time with you. let’s just go do some stuff. But I would not allow.

Matt: So but just y just to clarify, you when you say w you’d work for free, but the client would pay, so the money would come into the to the kitty.

Scott: The comp the money would go to the studio. and because I I basically the way we’ve run our business in Studio C and we’re already running then is like we were basically you pay for the time you use. It wasn’t like at the end of the month we each owe equal. It’s just like calendar, what did we do this month? Okay, you did this many days, you did this many hours, great, you owe that much, this many. And then anything in the black we would split, anything in the red we would split. and then there’s repairs, you know, there’s always something that needs to be fixed.

Matt: Right.

Scott: at that time I wasn’t involved in the red or the black. I was just putting in time and helping them stay in the black. and so I was I just wouldn’t allow an empty day. And then there was a time where I remember it was actually I was already kind of, I think I was already interning at at Tiny by that point. And I had this like 20 hour recording session, and then I had to like ride my bike across town over to Tiny Telephone and stuff. Stomped down the garbage can and cleaned the gross toilet because this was before he got a better bathroom. and it was it was rough. And and I was really exhausted. And I remember I Justin was mixing the next day, and I knew he was just mixing. And instead of coming in, I just left a note basically saying, Hey, I cleaned everything up. I’m really tired. I’m gonna sleep. so don’t expect me today. I’m sorry. And then he called me as I I just woken up. He calls me and he’s like, Hey man, you coming in? I was like, No, did you see the note? He’s like, yeah, I saw that. well, I need some CDRs because this is 2007, right? and I was like, I’ll get you those CDRs, I’ll be right there. And I like ran to Walgreens, bought a stack of CDRs, run down to the Hyde. and I catch him as he’s heading out to lunch. And he’s like, Hey man, you know, maybe you don’t need to be an intern anymore. And I’m like, my gosh, he’s firing me. He’s letting me go. And I was in the middle of a couple records. I was so scared. I was so scared. and And I le like we left it at that. And I was gonna assist him in studio A downstairs the following Monday. And so the whole like the next, I don’t know, 24 plus hours, I was just a wreck thinking, I’ve just lost a second internship. What am I doing with my life? and on Monday, I was assisting him and I remember we were in the mic locker up in the up upstairs in the back of High Street, and I it comes up. He brings it up again, and I go, About that, where am I gonna finish the records I’m working on? You know, because I you’ve been giving me this really great intern rate and I don’t know what I’m gonna do. And he goes, yeah, we’re just gonna make you a partner. He had not talked to Jamison about this. Jameson found out after the fact.

Matt: And and for the audience, Justin eventually left and went to Portland and stepped out of that situation, which maybe

Scott: About a year, two, two years later, maybe Justin moved to Portland, had a second kid and moved to Portland. And Jaimeson and I have kept it going.

Matt: Yeah. So what did Jaimeson say?

Scott: Jaimeson was cool. He was chill about it. I didn’t find out until like maybe a decade later when Jaimeson, like he and I, we have our disagreements ever every now and then, because you know, it’s a business, it’s hard. and I remember there was some disagreement, and I think I got impatient with him. And he he got impatient and let out that he was like, you know, when Justin made you a partner, he didn’t even talk to me about it or whatever. And I was like, not surprising at all. But

Matt: And for the audience, you know, Jamison’s been on, Justin’s been on. I’ll include links in the show notes, you know, so you can kind of listen to these different people. John, of course, has been on, so you can listen to that. It’s it’s connecting all the dots of these people. This is great because I didn’t I didn’t realize you had interned for John. I didn’t know you were at SF Soundworks. we’ll just table that. and then but that’s funny. So eventually.

Scott: Ha ha ha ha. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: You know, did did Chris McGrew take Justin’s place?

Scott: No. okay, so that’s a that’s a that’s a rough period, but character building. Justin left. and the same and another thing was when I rolled into Studio C, we had a bunch of Bob Weir’s gear. I think he had a studio I I was told it was above a car park or something or carport. I don’t know. he had some studio somewhere that shut down because of cause mold or something like that. And they needed to get everything out of this space. And somehow Justin managed to get all that gear into Studio C. And and I remember they had this Sony board with a bunch of John Hardy preamps that have been like aftermarket John Hardy preamps that have been put in. It sounded good. And it was the same Sony board, Sony MCI console that I had studied on in Berkeley. And I remember walking into the room and just going, like, my gosh, I’ve done tests on the like signal flow of this board. Like, I know this board inside and out, which is another thing that got me.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Scott: Going fast. Like once they started letting me do sessions, I was so comfortable on that board. and but it sounded better than the ones at Berkeley because it had the aftermarket pre-amps. but Justin left, and within a couple months, we lost all the weir gear. because they were building Tamil Pies Research Institute. They brought all their gear back to build TRI up in, I think, Terra Linda, very close to Novato. and Jaimeson and I Honestly, we should have just shut down at that point. and then Hyde Street hadn’t had a talk with the both both of us to to talk about the lease because Justin was gone. and so they they raised our rent. And Jaimeson and I, it was like it kind of just seemed like it was over. We had so little gear. I mean, we maybe had like 12 channels of nice preamps, and then I don’t I think that was I mean, it was dark. we didn’t have a console.

Matt: Can I can I pause for a moment? Cause I want to make sure the audience is going along for the ride here. Just so everybody knows. Okay, so Hyde Street, classic San Francisco studio. You’ve heard about it many times on the show. But within Hyde, there’s different studios. And Studio C that we’re talking about is upstairs. And that’s different people have control of different studios. Studio A is Hyde Street at this point.

Scott: Yeah.

Matt: And Studio C has gone through many, many owners. And when I was in my early twenties, I would do midnight to 8 a.m. sessions there when Sandy Pearlman ran the studio. So this is this is the structure of how this works. So when we’re talking about Studio C and Hyde Street raising the rent, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s a sublet within Hy.

Scott: Whoa, I didn’t know that. Absolutely. Yeah. And and when I started, Studio D was still part of Hyde Street. So they were still studios. and now they’re they’re they’re Hyde Street Studio. I mean, they are the the S is part of the brand and the name, studios plural, but they’re really just studio A and then and then it’s a bunch of subleases. And we’re a big complicated family. And I in a way we’re all competitors, but it’s not the that’s not the vibe at all. We all share gear, we pull gear. I’ve done sessions where they’re doing a salsa thing downstairs and and I’ll be like, dude, it would be dope to have Cowbell on this bridge, but I don’t just want dink, dink, dink. Let me go talk to that guy. And then we get, you we get a salsa dude to just walk up and lay down Cowbell. it’s a it’s a pretty exciting place to be just because it is like kind of this old school, like three big, large format studios, and then like everywhere else. I mean, if there’s a closet, someone’s in there making beats. and that’s In a lot of ways, I think what’s allowed Hyde Street to continue functioning is all knowing that there’s regular rent coming in from all the subletters, like me. but yeah, they raised the rent. We lost the gear, we were down to just like the bare essentials. and it was just Jaimeson and I without Justin, who was really the strong guy on the calendar. and we should have we should have just closed up, but we’re crazy. And so we’re like, nah, we’ll power this out. And This was 2009, 2010. 2009, it felt like maybe we were recession proof. because you know, all my friends were getting laid off. Everybody was like getting severance packages, but we were busy. I kind of think that it was all these people getting laid off were finally like, I’m gonna spend my severance money on this record I’ve always wanted to record. Like they had time, they were here. I don’t know, but all of a sudden 2010, everybody was dead. Tiny was dead, we were dead. I mean, all the All my other friends with other studios, I I don’t think I knew you necessarily at that point, but

Matt: I was I was suffering over at my building with that my Kamanowski and I were sharing. Yeah. It was it was it sucked.

Scott: Yeah, it was rough. And somehow I I survived like we survived that. I don’t even know how. It was so hard. I mean, I remember there were months where I would literally pay rent with a credit card. I worked up a lot of credit card debt that had to work with Bank of Mom to help me find a path to getting out of that. and that was really hard. but it it also taught me a lot about, you know, not spending Like not spending money I don’t have and having a savings account for emergency times and you know, being ready when for the economy to switch and you don’t know when it’s coming. So I I learned a lot and it it kind of made me stronger. At somewhere, I want to say 2015, 2016-ish. At that point, Jameson started mixing at home, and I was still mixing at at Hyde, in C in C, which also which now we call Wally’s Hyde Out. but at that point it was just Studio C. and I I was still doing all my mixing there and all my recording there, and it’s turned into like like maybe 80% of the calendar was me. And I was starting to lose my patience because I would get these gigs. I would be I was getting gigs where I was being I was going up to Panoramic in Stinson Beach for a month, or I was going to Sonic Ranch for a couple weeks, or I was going to I was getting flown different places, going up to Seattle, going going around the country to do what I kind of call destination records. and my studio would just sit empty the whole time. And so it was exciting and fun to go to a new place. but it was also frustrating because half the money I was earning was just going to paying for an empty room. And I I think actually, when I told you the story about Jaimeson telling me how our partnership began, this was this tough point for us where I was feeling overworked and a little like like burnt out, I think. And I kind of like broke down at him and and wanted. Because he started mixing at home, he stopped coming into the studio as often. because he lives he lives kind of out at the end of a Bart line. and exactly. And like over the next several years, he just like like his his trips into the studio became less less. He was working for Sammy Hagar, so he’s he was often up in the studio up there, up in Marin. and then mixing at home and then just sprinkling in a few dates here and there.

Matt: Yeah, you lived out in Pleasanton.

Scott: And I I remember just feeling like it’s all on me. It’s all on me to keep this place going. And I I kind of got really mad at him. And again, we worked it out. He was honestly, the dude is so cool. Cause I couldn’t he had every right to just tell me what a jerk I was and to never talk to me again. But he kept his chill. and he was like, I got a friend who I think is ready to maybe come in. And he brought in Chris McGrew. and Chris

Matt: Incredible drama.

Scott: Incredible drummer. He was a little green as a producer engineer at the time, but man, he gets great sounds in that room now. And he brings in pretty dope record. I mean, he did a headhunter’s record last year.

Matt: Yeah. He’s I love watching him play drums. He’s a great drummer.

Scott: He’s a great drummer. We also now we have like we used to be before him, we had like the studio kit, which was be like, no, I don’t want to use the studio kit. The studio kit is not it’s unloved. No one knows what to do with it. It sounds bad. It’s just like if you’re really desperate and you don’t have a kit, we could use that, but please bring your own drums in. And now with Chris, we have four very different drum kits that are all like perfectly tuned, always ready to go. Like every three or four sessions, he replaces the heads. He’s got sponsorships for the heads and the symbols. and now, I mean, and and it’s it’s so exciting. Also, he changed the hardware so that they’re all all the toms. I think it’s the Gretsch hardware maybe he’s using. I forget. But like basically any of the toms from any of the brands can fit on any of the kick drums as rack toms. floor toms aren’t a problem. But so you can mix and match. You can be like, I’m gonna do. the like ash kick drum with the the maple toms. it’s dude, it’s so it’s really opened up my world. And now I have like an ear for like the different sound the sounds of the different wood and and it’s great. It’s so great.

Matt: Yeah. But it’s the it’s n it’s the three of you now, right?

Scott: No, one more. We also, right before COVID, we brought in Roan. and that was another another moment where actually we were kind of struggling. I so here’s the thing. Shortly after we brought Chris in, I got a job at a video game studio. And so that had gotten a point and I built a home mix room. That was part of my whole pitch to Jaimeson was like, I felt like I wasn’t competitive because I couldn’t mix at home. and I knew if I started mixing at home, we’d go out of business. So we brought Chris in and it was working. But then as I started mixing from home more, kind of like Jaimeson, You know, I I feel like I mix twice as much as I record now. and I wasn’t putting as much on the calendar and it was falling on Chris, and we got a little behind. And so we had this like, all right, guys, the next two months we’re gonna pull ourselves out and we’re gonna make a bunch of money and just cover it. And Roan was our intern at the time. and I made this pitch to him. I was like I talked to them first, but I made this pitch. I was like, hey, this is our goal. We need to make this much money over the next two months. if you help us do that. We will bring you on as a partner. and he did. We did. We got it. and so we honored it. We brought him on as a partner. He’s been a great partner. And the first thing he wanted to do in 2020, he and Chris, they won the battle on this. They wanted to paint the walls. They wanted to redo the fabric. The place really needed a makeover. and I remember at the time there was a studio in studio, there was like somebody in studio D, I forget who they were. It was actually an old partner of our Nigel, but I forget his partners. They they had remodeled Studio D and made it look really nice. And then they didn’t last like two years. I like, every time a studio remodels, they go out of business in just two years. Like

Matt: Was that was that Tom Richardson and Sean Beresford? Right. They came because because when I got out of thirteen forty mission, Tom came in on my heels and took over my room.

Scott: Yeah, they came from thirteen forty mission. Yeah. And spent a bunch of time making it look squeaky clean and really nice. And then two years later, they’re out. And then they did the same thing in studio day. They spent a bunch of time making it look really squeaky clean and nice. and it went from like the least loved room in the building almost to like, wow, this room is gorgeous. And two years later, they’re out. I was like, no, like we can’t remodel. It’s the kiss of death. Like every time someone does that, they’re out in two years. And Ron like put his foot down. He’s like, I’m a new partner.

Matt: Yeah, Tom doesn’t get your

Scott: I really believe this. And Chris was like, yeah, let’s go. And they they won Jaimeson over. I lost that battle. So we shut down for the bulk of February 2020 and remodeled. And it was looking amazing. I mean, it really, I’m glad we did it. It looks, it’s such a nicer space now. And you know what happened in March 2020.

Matt: Right.

Scott: but we survived the curse.

Matt: Yep, yep, yep. Covid comes, kicks everybody’s ass. So, so how did you guys get through that?

Scott: actually we were really lucky. early on there was a grant program that the city had, for an arts grant that was like really easy to get into, I think. Because Jaimeson and I both got it. Chris and Ron were in it. We all applied, but Jaimeson and I each got a grant that we don’t have to pay back. and honestly, it was each the grant was like a little bit more than one month’s rent. So we basically had two months in change of rent covered. and then after that, like the the thing that’s interesting. So something that’s weird about Wally’s hideout or Studio C, which you maybe you know, is that the AC, we’re the only room in the building where we have a separate AC unit for the control room and the live room. So like they’re kind of airlocked, they’re different. and so what what we started doing is like, all right, like let’s all meet in the back. Everyone gets, you know, do what your do your tests, get your covet test, and we’ll all meet in the mask, mask mask up. Go in and like I’ve already placed mics. And then I would we would go and I’d let them in the live room, close the door, and then I would just talk through the mic and be like, move this here, move that there, great, cool, cool, cool. And then they would leave. I would give it a couple hours and then go in and tear down. but like the acoustic isolation is also kind of sort of covet isolation. And you know, we had to we had to make it work because we had to pay rent. and then Ron and I got into live streaming. I had worked on a on a game for Twitch. I’d worked on this Twitch Sings is what it was called. And I was I’d done all these like vocal presets for a karaoke game that was for live streaming. and I learned a lot about Twitch working on that game. I’d spent like six or seven months on it. and so I thought the sky was falling, and I was like, maybe we need to pivot into live streams. and that was so much work. it was a lot of work. I think we did okay. we had some pretty clever, like we we developed a lot of skills and our our streams were like for for the money we had, I think they were pretty high production quality considering it was like punk rock like budgets. but we had no audience. And then we looked at noise pop and noise pop had a huge audience and terrible sounding live streams, terrible audio, terrible video, terrible everything. And we’re like, we gotta link up with them. And then actually Dan Strickland from Noise Pop, Who now he likes show manages at Dunort often. I if you’ve met him, but Strickland reached out to us and was like, hey, we should talk. And so then we took over the noise pop streams. and that was a lot of work. But that was again, it was like money was coming in, and we were doing this work on live streams. and and then I remember there came a point by the like August, September, where it was clear that the sky wasn’t falling. you know, and and studio work, a lot of A lot of bands were pods. And so a lot of bands had spent a bunch of time in practice rooms together and were ready to come record. people had more time to work on our projects. And they were coming into the studio and I was like, I’m getting more studio time. Actually, this live streaming thing is getting in the way of doing what I want to do. And so we we thankfully gave it up and, you know, managed to get through there. also, I think Hyde Street, I think the owner of the building and then down to Hyde Street, I think. We managed to get a rent reduction. Like Hyde Street negotiated a rent reduction with the building and then passed it down to all the sub tenants. All it was a handful of things that helped us get through that year.

Matt: I want to jump ahead a a bit because you know, now I mean things settled out, right? You’re still there. You still have the video game gig.

Scott: Yes. I’m I’m on a I’m on a medical leave of absence right now. but yes I do.

Matt: That’s that’s what I want to get into. So something major happened to you that I want to there’s a couple lessons out of it that I want to bring up. So can you just sum up what happened?

Scott: Yeah. I was down in LA. I was in Northridge going to visit my buddy Tom Carr, another great recording engineer. and I I was I my my wife was getting was filling up the gas tank and I ran across the street to a to a coff get a cup of coffee. And I come out of the coffee shop and that’s as much as I remember. I made it across the street and down the block in front of the gas station, I guess, because that’s where I got hit by a car. I woke up ten days later and I had never finished my coffee.

Matt: Wow. Okay. So she’s pumping the gas. You go to get the coffee and then boom. And she’s probably like, my God, what on earth happened?

Scott: Yeah, she didn’t even see it actually. So actually going deeper into it, she it took me longer to talk than she than we expected to get the coffee and she finished pumping gas and then went to find me. And we must have gone different like circled around the block in different ways. Cause she was actually she went into the coffee shop and then went to use the restroom. And I had been on the phone with my studio partner, Ron. because we were I had a recording session with his band, Always Hallways, that weekend. Was scheduled, and we were talking about the plans for the session. And I mean, I don’t remember much of the conversation, but he says I yelled out, my God, my God. so I saw it coming, and then the phone call ended. And then he called Megan and was like, You need to go find Scott, like, where are you? You need to go find him. and she was just across the street at the coffee shop. She came back, and I mean, yeah, I flew like 20 feet. And was just she found me. I mean, but I think by that point the cops had already arrived and the the paramedics were on their way. but I was just face flat, 20 feet from the car, just in a pool of blood. yeah, pretty scary thing to see. and I’m and she’s had some car trauma herself, so I think it was pretty triggering for her. yeah, but I don’t remember any of it. I woke up like 10 days later. Yeah.

Matt: But you were out. But Yeah, you were completely knocked up. Wow. And w when you woke up, did you know what happened?

Scott: There’s kind of a so I was like, I was, I say woke up. I was responsive, but I was just speaking nonsense. And then there’s like a day or two of Crossfade where I started kind of forming memories. And I remember actually some really wild stuff that I was telling the nurses and like my family. it was a pretty psychedelic kind of dream state that I was in. and then there was some point, there’s some point where I registered, My whole family’s here. My my dad has traveled down from Northern California. My mom is up from Orange County. They’ve all come to like we’re all here. Why are we here in this hospital? We’re here for me. We’re here for me. This is all about something that happened to me. and somehow I traced it back to like the last thing I remember was getting coffee. and so I I don’t remember if I asked someone or how I figured out, but I I somehow it hit me that like. I was hit by a car. We’re here because of me. I was hit by a car. That’s why my body’s all banged up. And that’s why everyone’s here. and and it was about like a 48-hour period of this crossfade from I don’t remember a thing into like I kind of just became myself again. and and that’s a lot because all of a sudden you’re like, dude, I dude, I had a session scheduled with the drummer from Radiohead up at Panoramic. and actually, that had already passed by that point. But in my mind, I’m already thinking like, We could still salvage that session. Like, okay, okay, I just gotta call Patchalupi and let him know what’s up and I’ll figure this out. I gotta let him know, like, you know, it’s gonna be hard to get up and down the stairs into the control room, but you know, I’ll just I’ll pay someone to help me. We we got this figure, like, no, that he’d already found someone, like the world had passed. because I had been in a coma for 10 days. Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s crazy.

Matt: Yes. Yes. You were you were delusional, man. Okay, so some obvious questions. And I’ve and I’ve talked to you about this in in person, but and t t tell me if I get any of this wrong. young guy, no money. So you could sue, sure, but didn’t did he not have insurance?

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So okay, he he was 24 and he really doesn’t have anything. And what I got a I got a really great lawyer. it’s actually my my my friend, one of my friends slash clients, kind of, his his wife’s cousin. and and this lawyer, what they basically told me they hired a private eye and they looked into this kid and he doesn’t have anything. And basically what they told me is like I could sue. And maybe I’d win, but it would cost a whole lot of money. and then how do you get money from this kid? when he doesn’t have anything. And they basically said, unless he has like millions of dollars of property, it’s kind of the way our system is set up, it’s kind of not worth it to waste the time or energy or money suing them because I’m just not gonna get the return. and and on the other hand, the insurance settlement. And when you sign the insurance settlement, basically, which I hasn’t happened yet, there’s still Working it all out. But my understanding is when I sign the insurance settlement, I’m gonna have to sign a thing saying I won’t sue this kid. the insurance settlement is gonna be for 30 grand. That’s what his insurance covers, which it seems crazy that it’s even legal to have insurance that covers like for an accident that you could cause that would cover something so low. because dude, my three weeks at Northridge, when they sent the bill, I mean, I was thankfully I had health insurance. But the three weeks in Northridge, they wanted half a million dollars. It was five hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars for three weeks in Northridge. And let me tell you, Northridge, not worth it. It’s not that cool. It’s an okay town, but not there’s not that much to do. Not five hundred thousand dollars worth of fun.

Matt: Was it determined was it determined what he was doing? What caused this accident? Was he just was he drawing was was what was happening?

Scott: Yeah, so he was driving a Porsche, like a 30-year-old Porsche. Because at first when I first heard he was driving a Porsche, I thought, I’m gonna get some down payment money out of this. but no, he was driving like a 30-year-old Porsche that is not worth that much. and according to the police report, the witness that was a couple of the witnesses say that he was turning left, and as he turned left, he skidded out and lost traction on his tires. and so he was under steering maybe, I don’t know, and just rolled up on the sidewalk. I I mean looking at the I have a like we have a photo actually of the car that Megan took somehow with her phone, had the the the sense to take it. and my my broken flip flop. but like he kind of came up like at like not quite a forty five degree maybe a forty five degree angle like onto the sidewalk. And just narrowly missed a telephone pole and a bus station and found the narrow spot in between where I was. and I mean, just wrong place, wrong time. Like I I don’t want to freak anybody out, but like you’re not safe anywhere. Life comes for all of us. and I I’m I wish I was getting a bigger settlement out of this because I’ve lost a lot of income this year. but on the other hand, like I’m grateful I didn’t lose any limbs.

Matt: Uh-huh.

Scott: I have a pretty bad brain injury that’s actually holding up like, you know, surgery and my progress in other parts of my body. and yet it didn’t affect me cognitively too much. And that’s, I mean, honestly, a lot of that’s just luck. I feel really lucky that this wasn’t a way worse, way worse fallout. had I been standing an inch to the left or the right, I don’t know how things would have turned out. yeah, man.

Matt: We may not be having this conversation. So structurally in your body, what happened? What was damaged?

Scott: so much. my my stepsister has a friend who’s a doctor who came to visit me actually when I was in the rehab facility up in Vallejo. And his joke was like, You broke basically everything, everything but my back. I fractured my scapula, I fractured the occipital bone at the top of your spine, I fractured something in my sinuses, in my skull. I Fractured my tibia. I straight up just broke my fibula apart. I fractured a bunch of bones in my foot, I fractured some ribs. thankfully they were all they were mostly all pretty minor fractures, which didn’t need surgery or anything major to heal. but then the other big one is that I lost three ligaments in my knee and my meniscus is pretty messed up. So I am gonna have to have surge, like a couple surgeries in my knee. because You know, ligaments are pretty important and those those don’t grow back. but because I have this really bad hematoma that was like didn’t start to stable stabilize until July. until the hematoma’s gone, they don’t want to have surgery on my knee. so you know, I was I was confined to a wheelchair and honestly at the beginning I couldn’t use this arm when I would stand up and stabilize myself. I had like one good leg and one good arm, thankfully. and it was for a couple months it was really rough. But then I got this arm back, which never really hurt. I just wasn’t allowed to use it. I got this arm back and could put weight on this arm and that helped a lot. And then about a month ago You know, I started getting more and more comfortable walking with the walker and putting partial weight on this foot. And and then when I moved back to SF about three plus weeks ago, I was using a cane and within like a week of using the cane, I’m like, I don’t even need the cane. I’m I’m amazed that I can just walk now. I mean, I don’t I don’t walk normal and I can’t walk more than a few blocks, but but I can walk. and I haven’t even had knee surgery yet. So thanks to this brace and Modern medical technology.

Matt: Well, I’m I’m most grateful that, you know, you’re still with us and that’s good. did anything happen to this guy? Did he get like arrested for reckless driving? I mean, like it seems super duper frustrating that

Scott: I don’t know. Yeah, it is really frustrating. I don’t know. the I I don’t think the police report really told me any of that stuff. I mean they definitely caught him. but I don’t I don’t know. And I I honestly I I don’t I think our I think this is actually a problem with our country and our society, is that I think you have to really, really mess up To get punished for causing bodily harm to someone with a car. I mean, I’ve had plenty of friends, I mean, even myself, who have been doored or been hit by cars while cycling or walking. and like I think unless you really kill some people, we generally don’t punish because our society is built on cars. We’ve built everything around on we get around on cars. and that’s for me, that’s one of the reasons I never moved to LA is because I like living in a walking city. I like The fact that I before this injury, I was like a less than a 30-minute walk from Hyde Street. I could listen to rough mixes. I could listen to reference mixes on the way to the studio and listen to roughs of what I did that day on the walk home. And it’s just a perfect walk. I like walking, I like biking around town. I saw this crazy, scary urbanist YouTube video a couple months ago that said this crazy statistic that was talking about how in a handful of states, including California, mostly southwestern states, that That developed later, like not the earlier, where they, you know, not like East Coast cities where they have more walking cities, but more like West Coast cities where they’re really built around cars. that actually per capita, like pedestrian deaths are going, have gone up in the last 10 years. but the way the planners, the city planners and the politicians look at it is they don’t look at it per capita, they look at it per mile driven. And so we’re doing okay. Like people are driving more and more, they’re driving farther. They’re getting we’re we’re we’re better at getting around and traveling more miles in a car, and the deaths aren’t really going up for the amount of miles we’re driving. But if you budget it based on how many people live here and how many of them are getting killed, per capita deaths have actually gone up, which is really scary. And so he was kind of making this argument that we need to change, we need to change how we look at it and factor in per capita instead of just per mile driven. and I can say, I mean, I I’m glad I wasn’t one of those pedestrian deaths, but I you know, I am living through the repercussions of of some of those decisions, possibly, you know.

Matt: Very important lesson that came out of this that I’d like you to repeat, and this has to do with disability for freelancers. Can you just for, you know, because most of us, you know, my listeners, many are freelancers in California. So talk about that.

Scott: Yes, yeah. Yeah. So we’re lucky we live in California. It turns out I looked this up. I was looking this up last night, actually in prep for this. California has a really great state disability program. There’s only five states in the country that require employers to pay into state disability insurance or any disability insurance. and of those five, only two of them allow freelancers to opt in. and California is one of them. I’m suspicious, it’s probably because of the film industry. But maybe also the music industry. But we are so lucky that we live in a state that not only has a really strong state disability system, because it’s it’s required. If you have a W-2 job, your employer is required to withhold a certain percentage of your income and give that into the state disability insurance. And that’s because, like I said, life comes for all of us. And it it could be getting hit by a car, it could be a stroke or a heart attack. There’s so many things that could that could qualify you for state disability. and if you have a W-2 job, You know, you don’t even think about it. And it turns out it was there for you. But if you’re a freelancer, you have to opt in. And I didn’t know, but you need to opt in and you basically pay, I think it’s like one percent of your income quarterly. and you have to do it six months before you can get any claims out of it. And when you do it, you have to commit for like the next two years. You can’t say, like, I’m just gonna pay this month and change my mind. When you go in, you’re committing that for the next two years, every quarter, I’m gonna pay this much per this percent of my income. To pay into this. It’s so worth it. because like I said, life comes for all of us. I’m so grateful that that I have this because because I had a part-time job, I’m getting 70% of that part-time job from the state just for being injured, just because I can’t, you know, because I can’t walk, because I am hailing from a brain injury, because I’m spending so much time doing a rehab and I have this doctor’s note. and it really, I’m not gonna say that. It’s totally easy. There’s some paperwork to deal with and some bureaucracy and some good luck getting them on the phone. It’s really hard to get them on the phone. It’s the same, but it’s EDD. It’s the same group that handles unemployment insurance. It’s the same group that handles paid family leave. they handle state disability. And if when you when you don’t have to get someone on the phone, if you’re if you’re lucky enough that it’s just as simple as doing the paperwork online, it’s actually not that complicated. And They backpay you from like the date that you get your injury happen and they start taking care of you. And it’s been such a life send, a lifesaver. and and I’m so grateful. And I’m now I’m telling all of my friends, all my friends who are musicians, all my friends who work in film, all my friends that are freelancers, like if you live in California, opt in. If you live in New York, you can also opt in. In New York, it’s a private insurance meant like regulated by the state, but really. California and New York are the two states that have a program similar to ours. there are other states where it’s kind of part of paid family medical leave. and there’s a lot of states, including Oregon and Washington. A lot more states have like a paid family medical leave program, and many of them let freelancers opt in. And you there are, it’s not as broad as ours in California, but there are a lot of conditions where you can like you can basically get paid family medical leave for your own medical injury. But California has one of the best programs. And gosh, you know, there’s so many reasons where it’s like we are disadvantaged living in an expensive state. and and it’s hard. And it’s like, if I lived in Virginia, you know, I could maybe still get mixed gigs and pay a lot less for my living expenses. but but then it’s programs like this that you’re like, thank God we have this social safety net to protect us when things like this happen.

Matt: So okay, so can you make sure and get me the link that I can supply everybody in the show notes for at least our California listeners and and they know what what to do.

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. For freelancers, yeah, I’ll I’ll send the link to you. The for freelancers, it’s called DIEC Disability Insurance Elective Coverage. and it’s run through the EDD website. And yeah, I will I’ll get you that link. And and I I had not signed up for it because I, you know, I’m there’s I could be making I could be earning more from state disability. So like a larger percentage of the income that I was making before this accident. But I’m just grateful. I’m grateful I got something, and that’s only because I had this part-time video game job.

Matt: Right. So and in the so for audience, what what we’re saying here is is s if you live in California, if you are a freelancer, sign up preemptively in case something happens. Better to have it and not need it in the future. And because you know, you could have a stroke, you could get hit by a car, number of things. As you say, Scott, life comes at you.

Scott: So many things. Yeah. Life life just comes. And and if you don’t live in a state that has a good program like like I also would strongly recommend looking into like what sort of private disability insurance options are there for you. But, you know, the one here in California is is pretty cheap and has been a really huge thing for me, especially. and I and I’ve you know, when you when you go through a traumatic experience, you get a lot of trauma stories from all your friends and family. And it turns out a lot of my other friends have been, you know, helped out by this program. But I don’t know. I haven’t met a single freelancer in the music industry that had signed up for it because nobody knew and I didn’t know. I didn’t know either. So spread the word.

Matt: Look out. Yeah, let’s spread the word. Everybody’s gonna come signing up here. that is remarkable and you sprung back quite fast, I have to say. this accident occurred when?

Scott: March, March twenty fourth, a week after my birthday. Mm-hmm.

Matt: March twenty-fourth, twenty twenty-six. Okay, so here we are in August, at the end of August recording this. And yeah, it was it was great to see you at Bay Area Audio Nerds at where were we? We were at the conservatory and you were in a wheel.

Scott: Conservatory. The conservatory. And then there was there was one in Oakland out of the studio too. I went to I’ve been to two now and I was walking to both of them.

Matt: Yeah. I was out of town, but I I’m I I’m the first time I saw you back in in action was in your wheelchair.

Scott: Okay, yeah. I was definitely not walking at that point. but yeah. And and I mean that’s another thing is another great reason to live in the bay is how how comp how ADA compliant this place is. It’s so I was so worried about moving out of the suburbs and into the city with my wheelchair because at that point I I didn’t know I’d be walking in a couple weeks. and it turns out like the city is I mean I

Matt: So

Scott: I wouldn’t choose a wheelchair over walking ever, but it turns out it’s not nearly as impossible to get around the city as I thought. And I it was so encouraging to have this mobility of like, once I get if I can get help get help getting out of my apartment with my wheelchair, I can get on a bus and kind of get anywhere pretty quickly.

Matt: Can you just before we run out of time, I wanna make sure to get like, you know, prior to that accident, you had a viewpoint of things, post accident, have you had any major revelations like holy shit, that happened and I now feel differently about the following things.

Scott: Yeah, definitely. okay, the obvious one is the way I feel about nurses. because I had some some pretty I had some pretty dehumanizing moments in the hospital, just life and your body and things happening. I mean, I I couldn’t go to the bathroom without help. and some other things I don’t even want to get into. And and mo ninety-nine percent of my nurses were incredible and were so caring. They’re all they’re paid okay, but they’re all understaffed. So they’re all working so hard, so tirelessly, to take care of way too many people, and and and still bring empathy and and I don’t know. Now I feel like when a nurse walks into a show, like we should all just turn and clap and thank them for existing. because we’re all gonna need nurses at some point. And I I am I was that was a big one was just right away just realizing there’s this whole network of people that come in and care for you and and I’m so grateful for them. Also it was a this realization that like, you know, I’m so lucky to be making collaborative art with people for a living, and somehow making ends meet. and like I said, putting avocado on my burritos, living comfortably. you know, I’m I’m not going skiing in Tahoe and going up to Napa every weekend like you know, some tech people in the Bay get to do. but I I was living comfortably and going to shows and have and loving my life. and it made me realize how grateful I am for that and how eager I am to get back to that. and And I think this is also just something as I get older. You know, I have these moments where, like, in my 20s, the thought of this career seems so cool. And then there’s points in your 30s and your early 40s when you’re like, well, now I’m here doing it. Is it that cool? Or is this just like a lot of work? And it is cool. It’s really cool. I’m so grateful that we get to do this. and I just want to deliver even better work and value to out everybody that chooses to collaborate with me. and and also like how many of my clients. You know, I mean, there are definitely clients that like, you know, they need that mix done or they needed to record that because they’re going on tour and they they couldn’t wait. But I was shocked how many people were like, dude, we want to finish this record with you. We’re definitely gonna wait. Like, it’s not a big deal. Take the time you need, get better, get healthier. We’ll wait on those mixes. Cause at first, you know, I couldn’t look at screens. I was a little weirded out. and also now, like bands that that you know were waiting until I could walk around and set up mics and run a session. I’m so grateful. And it just it inspires me to just work even harder for all of them, you know.

Matt: And I bet you have a whole new appreciation of life.

Scott: gosh, yeah, never take walking for granted.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, seriously, it’s as you said earlier, you could have stepped one he could have hit you at a different point and killed you.

Scott: Yeah, so easy. So easily. Yeah.

Matt: So well, thank you so much, Scott, for for making time for this. really yeah, it it it has been fun. It’s just your story, especially with regards to this accident, definitely, you know, gives me perspective as well. So thank you for sharing that story. Thanks for sharing the thing about the disability. Let’s let’s make sure we get people that information because I I think our California brothers and sisters are really gonna

Scott: Thank you, man. This was really fun.

Matt: need to sign up and make sure that they’re all sorted out in that department.

Scott: Yeah. If you’re hearing this and you haven’t, s please sign up. If you live in California especially, it’s it’s so worth it. Just do it. Don’t even question it. Just do it.

Matt: Awesome. All right, Scott. Well, I’ll see you out in the community. And thanks again for for coming on and and sharing with us. Appreciate it.

Scott: See you man.

Matt: All right. Take care.

Matt: Eric, welcome to the podcast.

Eric: Matt, thank you so much for having me. I’m a huge fan and I’m very excited.

Matt: I wanna give a shout out to to to Chaz Root for being so gracious to connect us because you know, in all honesty, you know, sometimes like I get to the end of a week and I’ve been working all week and I’m like, huh, I didn’t set up a guest and I ha I don’t have any stockpiles of guests. And so I reach out to Chaz. I’m like, Hey, Anybody you think I should talk to? He came up with with a couple names and you being one of them and you know, one thing leads to another and here we are talking on a Monday, the day the episode’s gonna come out. So I’m a little I’m a little last minute like that sometimes, so apologies.

Eric: I love it. I’m the same way. I’m an eleventh hour, you know, make shit happen. You know, and and I’ll and I think oftentimes some of the best shit does happen when you do it that way.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so for everybody, including myself, who are you? Where are you? And what do you consider yourself?

Eric: well, my name is Eric Michael Lichter. I use my middle name because believe it or not, there’s another Eric Lichter in the world that makes music. So in order for me to, you know, carve out my slice, you know, and my identity, I started to just use my middle name. So it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t because I I wanted to be a prima donna or anything like that. and I’m in located in the Northeast in New England, Connecticut. and

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: I am a music a multi-instrumentalist. I am a multi-instrumentalist and a producer.

Matt: And you run a dirt floor recording there.

Eric: Yes, I run a studio called Dirt Floor Recording and Production and I’ve been in business now twenty years.

Matt: Wow, and this studio is located where?

Eric: my studio is currently located in the Connecticut River Valley part of Connecticut, near Middletown, near Wesleyan University.

Matt: okay. And and is it tied to your home at all or is it independent of your home?

Eric: So the studio itself is independent of my home. It’s in a different location entirely. In fact, I have to drive to work every morning and then drive home, which is nice. It’s nice being able to have the separation, you know, of those two things where you know, I wake up in the morning and think about what my approach is gonna be for the day. And the drive in, I start to sort of pregame. You know, thinking about how I’m gonna approach the session. And then in the drive home, I think about, you know, well, dinner, being home, dogs, you know, my wife, all of those things. so it’s the coming down part. I think it’s a necessary thing.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well let’s come back to the creation of the studio and and the the origin of that in itself because that’s always a I I find that to be a fascinating conversation to get into, but let’s go back to to early days. Where did you grow up?

Eric: So I actually grew up in Connecticut. I grew up on the shoreline. And music was a big part of my upbringing. My parents had this great selection of records. And I remember the Frank Zappa section. My dad like forbid us from listening to the Frank Zappa records. You know, we were kids, it was the 80s. And you know, those records were, you know, certainly for the time, or even before that time, maybe. You know, a little X-rated, right? But I discovered those Zapper records anyway. And I was like, man, this shit is really good. But they also had, you know, the Jackson Brown and the James Taylors and the Crosby Stilson Nash records. And those were the things that somehow resonated with me. And our parents were very supportive of us. And so music was the kind of thing that took hold very early on, where I was about 17. And I pretty much knew what I wanted to do at that at that time.

Matt: Interesting. And Did you discover those Zapper records because you s you did what he asked you not to do, or did you discover them independent of his collection?

Eric: Well, you know, when any when someone tells you not to do something, you want to do it, right? And we know as parents, right? You know, it’s the same, you know, it’s it’s it passes down. So he just said, you know, don’t go near these. And so those were naturally the things I wanted. And the album covers themselves and the song titles were totally bizarre. And I just remember, you know, it was more Zappa than it was Steely Dan for me. Yeah, I don’t listen to much Frank Zappa now, but at that time it was a pivotal moment. because I I went so far into the rabbit hole on on those records. And I started to listen to the musical components, the parts, the like the the marimbas, you know, on those records and just the way those of records were put together, that it kind of changed.

Matt: yeah.

Eric: The way I listened to music then.

Matt: Interesting. Okay. So what did when you when you listened to the the music that your dad had, was there a drive to play an instrument? D did any particular instrument stick out as, hey, I want to do that.

Eric: Yes, definitely. So as a teenager, I discovered aside from the I’ve stressed I’ve stressed the Zappa stuff a lot. And it and as as important as that stuff was for a moment in time, it was really the first Crosby Stills in Nash record, the one with the three of them on the couch. That record changed my life. to where it’s you know, it still like permeates my being, you know.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: in fact, there’s a song on that record called You Don’t Have to Cry. And it’s just the three of them singing, and it’s very simple, and it’s my favorite song of all time to this day. but to answer your question, it was it was the Hammond organ. And I’m not a great keyboard player. I I’m a passable keyboard player. I play a lot of keys on a lot of records. but in listening to those Crosby Stills and Nash records, and reading the liner notes, I realized that Steven Stills was The guy that played the majority of the instruments on that particular record. In fact, he was called Captain Many Hands on that album in the liner notes. So it was the sound of the ham and organ. I was really kind of mesmerized by the Leslie speaker and like what that thing did. You know. So it started out, you know, his guitar was the first thing. And And I started to kind of play bass because again, Steven Stills played bass on those albums and Joni Mitchell records and then the Hammond organ. So little by little I started to learn how to play different instruments just to be able to put it all together. But I didn’t know that that would serve me later in life, you know. It was sort of a means to an end because I didn’t really know. All the drummers and the musicians and the guitar players I knew when I was a kid were listening to like Poison, you know, and Motley Crew and, you know, stuff I wasn’t really into at the time. I’ve always been a hippie, I suppose. So that stuff didn’t interest me as much as the stuff I I grew up on.

Matt: Okay. Your exposure to other musicians and in a music scene was was there much of a music scene there where you grew up?

Eric: Ultimately there was. when I was a teenager, not so much. It was a very kind of it was based around athletics, you know, so certainly as a teenager. and then I discovered I could sing. So I I you know my I we had a soccer coach. This soccer coach also taught chorus and music. Great guy. I still talk to him to this day. He changed my life. made me feel valued, you know, and that I had something to offer. So he recognized that I could sing. And so you know, he drafted me for the chorus and I sang in the chorus and I was in the plays and I did all of these things that a lot of my friends who were like, you know, in metal bands and stuff, they kind of frowned upon. You know, they were like, man, that’s like some real lame shit you’re doing.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: But it really made me feel connected to something, you know, like, I’m really good. I can sing. Like, I I guess maybe this is my calling. This isn’t such a pie in the sky thing after all. And fast forward many, many years, I mean, I had even left the area, but this area is now really known for its jam band scene. You know, we’ve got goose comes out of this area. And there are a lot of a lot of great artists came out of Connecticut. I mean, Keith Richards lives here, so that’s a cool thing. I always figure Connecticut can’t be that bad if we get Keith Richards. John Mayer is from Connecticut, and you know, on and on and on. but I still, you know, you still, when you’re growing up, you still have to leave. You know, you still have to leave. And at that time in my development.

Matt: Wow, I didn’t know.

Eric: You know, John Mayer was still like a zygote at the time. You know, a lot of these these people weren’t here. So I went off, moved around the country, lived pretty much everywhere there was to live. And I I’m probably putting the cart way before the horse now. I’m getting ahead because I still want to kind of get to the development of of where dirt floor came from.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, but but that’s interesting. What w what places did you go and what was the goal in going to these places? Were you just exploring and trying to find yourself?

Eric: Okay, so yes. Yes. So post high school, I tried college, it wasn’t for me. so you know, I was not an academic, you know, I didn’t respond well to it. In fact, I failed guitar 101 in college. You know, I I could I was so poor in college that I failed the thing that came so naturally to me. But the thing, Matt, to understand, and I know that you know you have this, and so many of your guests have this, it’s it’s this thing that’s in you, like you either have it or you don’t. Sometimes you can go to school for it and you still don’t have it, you know. no amount of money that you spend in a school environment is going to give you something that you have. And so, you know, I felt like I had this natural thing, it just came easy to me. And So I went off to kind of figure out who I wanted to be. And I this recording thing was far off. So far off, you know, years from even happening. I knew I could sing and write songs. I really got into being a songwriter and a singer. So in my twenties, I started to do the troubadour thing, you know, the singer-songwriter thing. And I lived on and off on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. Off of Cape Cod for many years, and my brother too. And we had, and it’s a very the island is so rich with musical culture. You know, of course, you’ve got, you know, James Taylor lived out there, Carly Simon to this day lives out there. And so me and my brother fell in, in fact, with with Carly and James’s kids, because we were working at this nightclub out there called the Hot Tin Roof.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: Which was a c nightclub that James and Carly bought when they were married. I think they opened it. And they certainly, and they at that point had been divorced for many years. But Carly took a liking to us. She heard me and my brother sing, and we would go over to the house and kind of hang out. And it was kind of a surreal thing. But in my mid-twenties, I felt like holy shit, I’m in this, this is like some cool shit. For a kid. I’m among my heroes. And my heroes were the people that made up those records. So we’re talking Danny Kortchmar. We’re not talking about like Carly was wonderful and very gracious and incredible to us. But the people that like blew my mind were the musicians. So we had done a bunch of recording with her. A lot of that stuff remains unreleased. But she had like Danny Kortchmar, Jerry Marotta and Rick Marotta, a T-Bone Wolk who played with in the SNL band and with Hall and Oates. All these great musicians that were like in the liner notes of all of these other records that I remember, you know, looking at the those credits as a kid, you know, James Taylor, Jackson Brown, Don Henley, and so on and so forth. At that, that was the moment in my mid-20s where I felt like, you know, I I this is this could be a thing. You know, we’re like rubbing elbows with these really great people who seem to like us, who seem to think we’re like pretty good. You know, especially.

Matt: Let me I wanna ask you though in in that in that situation, did you see yourself on the supporting musician side or did you see yourself on on say the Carly Simon side of things where you you wanted to be the star?

Eric: I didn’t know. I didn’t right there, Matt. Let me tell you, there’s never been a point in all of my years on this planet where I’ve ever suffered from any delusions or illusions about what it is, what it is I wanted to do, and what it is I do to this day. You know, and I feel like that’s probably protected me to some extent and also been the The thing that has allowed me to continue to evolve in this business that is constantly reinventing itself all the time. So we’ll go back, I’ll answer the question. So I at that time really wanted to be an artist. I was a songwriter and a singer, and my brother was in school. My brother was at the New England Conservatory studying jazz vocal, and he’s tremendous, even better than I am, actually, as a musician. His life took him other places. But we really wanted to be artists. It’s what we were, it’s what we were recognized as out there on the island. And then we went out to California and I was in New York for several years, and I was really like pounding the pavement, you know. So I left the island and I went to New York City, right? With this great experience under my belt and this great and these great friendships, okay, with, you know, the Marathas, Jerry, who I haven’t spoken to in many years. Those. relationships opened up a lot of doors by the time I got to to the city. So I was playing and I was singing and I’m not a prolific guy, but I wrote some good songs, some songs that got some attention. And so you had we had some people from Polygram, which was also Island Def Jam. It was like sort of the Polygram was the the umbrella at the time. Which also had Island, Def Jam, Capricorn, AM Records, Verve. There were all of these little labels. And so Mercury was one of the labels, another label. And the AR, one of the AR people there, took an interest in what I was doing. And she put me in a studio. I went, I got to record at Sear Sound.

Matt: yeah.

Eric: So keep in mind, I I know nothing. I don’t care about this stuff. This is 1990, 1998. Studio stuff is still like a foreign concept to me. I’m just this dude that writes and plays guitar and I’m I like sing songs. And so they foot the bill and they put me in a studio and I record a handful of these songs with session musicians. So I’m thinking, shit, this is working. Like I’m gonna like. It’s really starting to happen for me. And there was no like, there was no Instagram. There was no like, I couldn’t like document every minute of my of my time going through that. It’s all here now, you know? So long story really short, that was a that was a short-lived moment in time where labels would would sign these acts to demo deals, right? And they would put them in a studio, they would record a batch of songs.

Matt: Yeah.

Eric: Going as far as to even create artwork and to kind of get to, you know, talk about the next thing. Next thing you know, the record company is bought out by the Seagrums Corporation, which are the wine cooler people. And they’re like, drop everybody, like get rid of everybody. You know, we’re starting a whole new thing here. So we want to basically only work with the artists that are proven entities, right? So as quickly as it all happened for me is as quickly as it all went away, right? That was my shot. And the AR person who still remains a friend to this day, she took pity on me because there was a a little bit of money that came my way. That was in the days of like they would give you some money. And I got a little enough to be able to buy some equipment. I’m I’m trying to kind of get there quick enough because we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

Matt: Yeah.

Eric: I bought some recording equipment. So my parents were still in Connecticut. There was a pro audio dealer in Reading, Connecticut, by the name of Turner Audio. And I had a a friend of mine who now works for Sheps Mics. His name’s Scott Boland. Great guy, great friend. He worked there and put together a package. My dad, my parents, who were again very supportive, gave me the 10 grand I needed. To put together a small like project studio in the basement of my parents’ house in Connecticut. Because I had to give back the money that like I owe I owed the record company this money back. So I had to kind of give that back. The Lord giveth, right? And the Lord taketh away.

Matt: man, yeah.

Eric: And there’s more on that side of things too. So my my my dad helped us out and we put a little studio in the basement in these little road cases, these little SBK, pretty cheap road cases. I had a preamp, which was an HHB radius, very like not expensive stuff, two DA38 machines, a Neumann 103, and a Mackey. Like really the most basic but functional shit you can imagine.

Matt: Okay. And very, very of that time, the modular digital multitracks, the Mackey boards, like all and and like you say, the H H B stuff, you know, very, very of that era.

Eric: Yeah. Not a com no compressors, nothing, you know, just the basic stuff necessary. So I had two, two of those Task Am DA38 machines, and it was at at our parents in the basement. So when we would go home on weekends, we would mess around on that stuff, right? Yeah, my brother would go home and mess around on his own, or I would go home and mess around on my own, or we would mess around together. It was just there.

Matt: You and your you and your brother.

Eric: And there were there were actually a few years where it wasn’t touched ever. And so what happened was I was working for the record company, and then I had and I was hit by a car outside of my apartment in Brooklyn Heights. You know, bad enough to where, like, you know, I was hospitalized, but I wasn’t in I wasn’t in danger of dying. But I but what happened was is I had a lawsuit with the driver of the car.

Matt: Like how bad are we talking?

Eric: because it was a trash pickup day and it was, you know, Brooklyn and New York and those boroughs, they get very clogged on trash pickup day. Everything grinds to a halt because you’ve got the garbage trucks and the car, it’s it just becomes very congested. And I was in front of my apartment crossing the street, and this car, you know, didn’t want to wait and, you know, put it, it jammed the car in reverse, hit me in reverse, hitting me in my back, throwing me about 20 feet.

Matt: Uh-huh.

Eric: Yeah, and that’s, you know, it fucked me up for a while, like so much that it created you know, there was a little bit of like sort of post-traumatic stuff going on. And anyway, I recovered from that and I was able to, we had a little lawsuit with the driver. And I I’m not a litigious person, but that needed to happen just so I could cover all of my stuff. So I was actually on disability.

Matt: Absolutely. Right.

Eric: from the record company. So I was able to get paid disability from the record company, who I had to pay back.

Matt: That’s interesting. Were you were you still technically signed to the record company?

Eric: No, no, no, no, that happened. I mean, that that was at least a year in the past. So they had hired me to work for them to sort of work off some of the debt. So the AR person hired me to work at the record company. So I worked in the royalty administration department where they were paying me every week, but would garnish my wage to put it towards the debt.

Matt: My gosh.

Eric: Yes. So after this accident, I was able, this is what was, I hope this makes sense to the listener. So after this accident, I was able to make enough money to be able to pay back that debt to get them off my back and to be able to buy and pay back my dad for this studio equipment. So I was free and clear at this point. I was sort of a free agent at this point and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Honestly, I wasn’t sure. And this go, this is 2000. Okay. I wasn’t sure I wanted to even make music anymore. I was really like seeing the way it was run through the record company and going through this sort of life-changing experience. I wanted to just travel a little bit and just kind of forget about it all, right? So I went out to

Matt: That’s that’s a that’s a pivotal moment, right? Because you’d been hit by this car, you’d you had to work for the record company to pay off record company debt.

Eric: Yes. Matt, this was the moment. This was the actual moment. Okay. So I remember it happening. So my brother was in LA at the time. He’s living in Santa Monica. And he’s living with this kid that he went to college with. They were real they were in a band together. And so this kid’s dad was an engineer. He recorded he was the one of the head engineers at the record plant in Sausoled. He was a guy that engineered all the cheap trick records. His name’s Gary Ludinsky. So Gary, awesome guy. Gary actually was the guy that did the whistle on the Mar on the Molly Hatchet flirting with disaster song. There’s a period where there’s a whistle, the that’s that’s Keith’s dad. So my brother’s out in LA, he’s hanging out with Keith, and Keith is a jazz head. So my brother put together this band with Keith, and they’re all New England conservatory cats, right?

Matt: shit, that’s funny.

Eric: So they put together this band called Barnstorm and they go back out to LA to make a record. And so my brother calls me. He’s like, hey, we’re out in LA. Why don’t you come and join this band? You know, we’re having a blast. You know, Keith’s dad is awesome. So by that time, Keith’s dad, Gary, had, you know, started his own company in Burbank, a pro audio rental company called Design FX Audio. You may remember it, you may not. So we would go to Burbank to work on this record. He had a mobile truck, which had an API in it, and a bank of DA38 machines. Again, this is like 2000, right? So that was like everything was so awesome. And he had a bank of these things. And I remember Gary’s warehouse was all studer machines and like all of this stuff. That I didn’t appreciate at the time because I still didn’t care or really it didn’t register to me what what this was, you know. So we were out there for a while, and then I came back east and I started to think, well, you know, maybe I’ll work on my own record. You know, I spent some time out there, it didn’t really happen. And it was time to come home. And so I moved back to New York City, the scene of the crime. And I have this equipment at my parents’ house. So this would be 2004. I’m kind of like kind of trying to get through the years here. 2004, I buckle down and I start to work on a proper album for myself. So I bring a lot of that gear at my parents’ house to my apartment. And I start to record a record called Corduroy, which was ultimately the title. And I play everything on this record. I play drums, guitars, keys. Everything. And you can hear my dog barking, you hear the dog collar. And I put this record out. I released it. Joe Gastwort, who did a lot of mastering of a lot of classic albums, Grateful Dead records, Joni Mitchell, and stuff like I had him master it. And this is still early, this is pre MySpace and Facebook and Instagram, you know, like some of those names still mattered at the time. You know, there was still some clout there. So it’s like, well, I want this guy to master it because he did these things. So somehow being attached to this guy, I’ll it’ll give me some clout somehow, you know. So I released this album. I put it out on a small independent label out of Woodstock, New York, and a lot of people like latched on to this record, and people started to ask me to do their record for them. So this was the pivotal moment.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: This crosses over into about 2005, 2000, and I was back out on the vineyard around this time, and I have my gear, all my studio gear. And so dirt floor was wherever I brought it. Okay, so the other f the important part of this whole story is that dirt floor isn’t really about a place. It’s never been about a place. It’s always been about what I’m doing with an artist. You know what I mean? And so on the vineyard, once once I was back out there, I’m dragging all of this gear around recording artists wherever they needed to be recorded, in a house, in a hall.

Matt: Right. C yeah, can I could I ask because it from my own curiosity, Martha’s Vineyard, you know, so I I think the average person and including myself just associates that as well, that’s just a a place where a lot of very rich people, celebrities live and and and people are just hanging out. And I’m sure that there’s, you know, a whole working class of people that, you know live and and maybe they live outside the island and they come to work on the island at at grocery stores and coffee shops, et cetera. So can you talk about like the opportunities for music on Martha’s Vineyard for a brief moment?

Eric: Yes, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I I’m definitely not an authority now because it’s been so many years, but I’m still very close with a lot of people who have made music out there or who have you know, or or there it’s the home base for them. so you know, you’ve got like Evan Dando from the Lemon Heads out there. you have there’s endless amounts of people, Willie Mason, great engineers, great producers. it is there are six distinct towns on this island. It’s big enough to where you you’d feel like you’re on the mainland. and in the wintertime, the you know, your summer population leaves and you’re left with, you know, the the winter, the folks who live there all year round, you know, who are basically just waiting for summer to basically service the the the rich and the famous, right?

Matt: Right.

Eric: But it is a great place. There’s a great studio out there. You know, I’ve got a friend named Jim Parr out there who’s had a a studio out there for near to 30 years. Parr Audio. You know, he’s done a lot with certainly with Carly. He does a lot of you know, audiobooks, you know, if you know, any big musicians or happen to find themselves out there for a length of time, they’ll go out, they’ll go to Jim’s place and work.

Matt: Mm-hmm. And and question, did you ever run into Cynthia Daniels? She was on episode three forty one. I think she runs a studio out there.

Eric: I haven’t, but I know who she is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I know who she is. and and there’s a lot of that. Again, you know, it’s it’s not far from the mainland, but it’s far enough. so you know, being out there was a great thing because again, I was able to reconnect with a lot of the people that I lost touch with, you know, and

Matt: Yeah, yeah, ’cause she I think she’s from Stanford, Connecticut. Yeah.

Eric: I start I made this record of my own. That record started to make its way into people’s homes, okay? And People would start to ask me if I could do, could I could could you do this for me? I was like, well, yeah. I mean, I could show I could give it a shot. So I would start to work with artists, various artists. Some have gone on to do great things, some of them have disappeared, you know, into the mists of time, you know. And I would play bass and I would play drums. I would put organ and whirlitzer and harmonies and whatever I I felt the song needed, right? And so we would build the songs up. And I didn’t really realize that what I was doing was producing. I was like years off from even, you know, calling myself that. But that’s apparently what I was doing. Because people would be like, okay, well, you produced it because you helped me like with lyrics and you helped the tem you helped me pick out like you change chords if we needed to change a chord to make it more impactful.

Matt: And so you there you are with this set of talents, musically speaking, and then this set of gear that you can move around. Were you going to different people’s homes?

Eric: Yeah. Yeah, you know, at the time it it was a a kind of a a movable thing. because I wasn’t thinking of a studio. I I had no thoughts at at that early point, like 2004, 2005, to having any kind of a a real studio per se, you know, like a home base. It hadn’t crossed my mind. And then I I I met a person who would become my wife. later on and then ex-wife later on, but we’re still close. It’s all good. But we had we had our daughter. She had our daughter. And it was time to kind of think about, you know, shit or get off the pot was really kind of the message that was being sent to me very clearly. And I knew that I wanted to stay in music because I I’m not good at anything else. And I knew I didn’t want to just be a singer and a songwriter anymore. I mean, the writing was on the wall for me, where it was like, okay, you know, that’s you’re not gonna be the next James Taylor or Jackson Brown. That’s just not gonna happen. I’m not prolific. I’m not hungry enough. I’m just not. I I I can’t live in a van and just live on the you know, I’m not cut out for that. I’m too practical. I was raised by a very you know, my dad’s a very practical guy, and so In order for to make this thing work for me, it’s gotta be practical. I have to kind of be on my terms, you know. So we find a space in Chester, Connecticut, not far from where I am now. We find a rental. And it’s like, okay, I’m gonna find a a place and we’ll put this studio and we’ll call it a we’ll pick a name for it. What’s a a good name? And so we came up with the name Dirt Floor, and this would be 2006, March of 2006. And I think it was the early MySpace days. It’s right around there. And so I believe I started to advertise on MySpace for my business. You know, I got an LLC and everything, and you know, hung my open my open for business sign. And little by little business started to trickle in. And I destroyed a lot of people’s work, I’m sure. But I have to tell you, you know, it was a learning, you know, I was learning, they were learning, you know, what do you want? I’m charging them a couple hundred bucks a session. You know what I mean? It’s we’re all going through it together. But it was the beginning of something. And it was the beginning of me really realizing that, hey, this there’s something here. I don’t know what it is, but I think I found my place. And I wanna go, I wanna go back a little bit before that. And I don’t want to give you too much to have to edit because I don’t want to drive you nuts with it. But back in 2005, before the studio was even a thought, my brother was up in Woodstock making his record with Jerry Marotta. He was in the j in the studio with Jerry. And at the time, Jerry had a studio called Jarysville. This was before he this was before Jerry took over

Matt: Okay.

Eric: What is the place in Kingston? Dreamland. So Jerry Marotta took over Dreamland Studios in Kingston, New York, which is an incredible studio. It’s legendary. And Jerry himself, who I have not talked to in many years, is just an incredible engineer and producer. So my brother is working with him at his studio. He’s got Tony Levin on his shit. You know, it’s like the Peter Gabriel rhythm section. So let me tell you, I

Matt: man.

Eric: I learned a lot of lessons from watching my brother make this record with Jerry at his place, Jarysville. So I go up to visit my brother at Jarysville to add some background vocals, and he’s got a stack of this magazine called Tape Op. And I’m like, man, this magazine is so fucking cool. Like, I just love that you can go back to previous issues, and it’s like a tome. It’s like this thing that. No matter how many times you go back to it, you find some new incredible information. And it spoke to me, especially at that time in my life, you know, being a sort of a gorilla style record maker. You know, I remember saying out loud in the room, I was like, I I’m gonna be in this magazine. I I wanna get in this. And Jerry was laughing because he’s like, You’ll never, you don’t know what you’re doing. Like I think he was he was being facetious. He was like, you’re never gonna get in that. And at that time, I think they had done the Tape Op tape op had done a piece on Jerry. And I was like, I was like, listen, asshole. I was like, I’m gonna be in this fucking magazine someday. And it was kind of a loose goal, you know what I mean? Come to find, you know, back in 2013, they finally did a piece, you know, of like a proper story on what I do. Which was funny because I didn’t have very much gear than what I had early on. I I had a couple of you know, a bigger mixing desk and a and an analog tape machine and a radar, the Atari radar. But I really had nothing when Tape Op did the piece on me in 2013 because it was never about the stuff. You know, and this is what I was telling you before we started to roll. My job as a producer and what I do day to day has very little to do with my knowledge or lack thereof in this equipment that’s behind me. You know, I have a very working knowledge of it. I I’m really a musician. I’m really trying to get the vibe and get, you know, and get the energy down. You know, the rest doesn’t matter to me as much. You know, I’ve got a great engineer. And a partner now who works with me, who really is a fantastic engineer who make who cleans up my shit. Okay. He’ll go, man, like there’s all this noise. What the hell did you use? I’m like, I don’t know, whatever was closest. That’s kind of my thought. Like, let me grab what’s closest to try to capture the energy if I can, before the energy or before the moment is past.

Matt: Right. But you know how to do it. You just, you know, t to wear both hats sometimes is just uber uber challenging.

Eric: Yeah, and I’ve never enjoyed it. Yeah, I’ve never enjoyed it though. I I remember do you remember that that movie Ed Wood? I always felt like, you know, to explain to someone what I do. I’m like, watch Ed Wood. I’m like, I’m that guy. I’m like, that’s good enough. Let’s go. I mean, I want to capture the vibe and the energy. I want to make sure the take’s right. But from this perspective, it’s like, you got the take. The take sounds great. That guitar solo kicks ass. I don’t care that like your belt buckle scraped it or that there was some weird noise or something. You know, to me, that’s the beauty mark. And in this,

Matt: Right.

Eric: And now, like here we are in twenty twenty six and we’re battling AI, which I know people are already tired of, thankfully. I feel like we’ve reached a sort of a place where people, regular people who aren’t like us, are tired of hearing about it. They want real interaction, they want real noise, they want real

Matt: I’m just I’m just actually tired of people talking about it. It’s just like all anybody can ever talk about.

Eric: I’m tired of it too, yeah. There’ll be a point where we won’t. I think, you know, it’ll be like anything, but but what’s great now, and I and we both have kids, you know, you know, I know my daughter loves real music. She loves, you know, all the classic stuff, you know, because it’s made by real people. So, you know, my goal back then as it is now is to, you know, make music that just feels lived in. It feels timeless, I suppose.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you know, I I won’t go down an AI rabbit hole and and I don’t want to sound like an old man either, but like I was just on a I was just visiting my parents in New Mexico and my kids came with me and I look over my twenty year old sitting to my left and I look at his phone and what he’s listening to and I see the cover of Van Halen One. I never showed him that record. He discovered that on his own. And I was I I was asking him, it was just like so, you know, what do you like about this? We got into a conversation about it. And I said, You don’t know how happy that makes me to see you listening to that record. That was an important record for me growing up. But I digress to a degree. so

Eric: Yes. It’s listen, I I understand that. I, you know, you’re and again, you get you get to sort of live hear that record for the first time through them. It’s an amazing thing what that will do to you when you when you see your child, you know, listening to something that you did not, you know, you did not try to influence them in any way to make that decision. You know, you’re able to kind of revisit that as if for the first time. And there’s a it puts a new spin on that on Van Halen one, certainly. You know, I’m I’m the same. You know, my daughter discovered ACDC, the early Bon Scott stuff. And I’m like, you know, like what is it? Live wire. In fact, we were driving in the car fairly recently and live wire comes on, right? And you know, there’s the beginning of the of the song and you hear the tubes rattling and the amp. You can hear it. I’m like, honey, I’m like, listen. I was like, nowadays they would try to clean that.

Matt: which which I love. Mm-hmm.

Eric: They would try to get that s they they don’t want that sound in there. It’s like that’s what makes that so magical is you hear all of it. You know, I got so excited, you know, you can’t show your excitement too much because then, you know.

Matt: I d I know, but I do like what you you just back to what you were saying about, you know, noises like that, things like that. The beauty marks.

Eric: Yeah.

Matt: You know, th those those little characteristic things. The ca whether it’s and and and I keep reflecting on this to to kind of you know put a pin on the the whole AI thing. The last Michael Beinhorn interview I did, Michael talked basically how we’ve been teeing it all up for years, perfecting and chopping and editing and gridding out and and click tracking and every little thing that we’ve done.

Eric: That’s important.

Matt: has been a a a basically a lead up of self-sabotage because now we’ve handed it over in such perfection in some respects to some music that ai can just duplicate exactly what we’ve all been working to you know clean quote unquote clean up so i think we’re gonna see a shift away from the cleanup moments

Eric: That’s true. Of course. I think, you know, it’s a moment in time, just like anything else. And I and I think, you know, we’re gonna be okay. I think I always I look at, you know, I don’t really listen to Taylor Swift at all, to be honest. I love I do love Jack Antonoff. I love what he does. I love what Aaron Dessner does. There are a lot of producer engineers out there that I love. I came up with the people I really admired were like Ethan Johns.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eric: Jonathan Wilson, the people who I thought like sort of he was the guy that made me realize, like, shit, this is what I do. Like that’s it has a name because before social media and before Instagram made everybody a producer and an artist, I was apprehensive about calling myself that. I didn’t use the term. I let other I never use that term for myself until like dozens of people started giving me that credit, you know? It was never something I I appointed, you know, onto myself. but I do admire a lot of newer producers out there doing and certainly a number of the people that you have on your podcast, you know, that just, you know, really inspire me.

Matt: Right.

Eric: And you know, when I have those days where I’m not feeling inspired, you know, listening to it really pumps me up and gets me psyched out for the day. I don’t know where I’m going with that, but yes.

Matt: That’s okay. Well let’s let’s get to dirt floor. So you create the you you’re in a new the the first location is a rental. It’s an LL you got your LLC together and you set up shop. W how long did you stay at the rental spot? And you specifically called that out. So it makes me ask, is the spot you’re in now, do you own the building?

Eric: Yes. Yes. I do not. It’s they’ve all been rental buildings.

Matt: Okay, how has that worked out for you?

Eric: It has worked out tremendously well over the years. I mean, dirt floor, it’s a bit of a running joke, but I can handle it now. dirt floor has been in no less than seven different locations over the years. And they’ve all been they’ve all been equally, you know, inspiring, you know, for so many different reasons. And the last the last place the studio was was the longest. Okay. So I was in a log cabin about 15 minutes from this.

Matt: Okay.

Eric: Place. And it was a wonderful place. It was a very old log cabin and you had to climb this hill. And the drive up the hill is pretty daunting. I mean, there were people that would have, you know, would give you a panic attack to get up to the spot. But it was really inspiring and it was kind of in my own way. It felt like my own Caribou Ranch. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Caribou Ranch. Yeah, it’s in Netherland, Colorado. Yeah. Big spra.

Matt: In is that in Colorado? Yeah, yeah, like big sprawling.

Eric: Yeah, and so and so that place, Caribou, has always been an an inspiring thing for me. Like Jim Gershio, who is the resident producer there, he’s a big inspiration for me. And his son was a good friend of mine. So that’s why I I bring up caribou, but this was my own little caribou, really, here in New England, in this log cabin on this private piece of property owned by a wonderful family who, you know, you know, gave me their blessing. So for a good decade, I had my studio there. I had an old camper trailer on the property. It was super funky. Artists could come and spend a week and make a record. You know, it was a really wonderful place. And then about a year and a half ago, I had an opportunity to move into this place, which is this sort of it’s a slightly bigger, maybe a little more refined place. It’s an English. Style country house, you know, on a big private piece of property with a couple of bedrooms upstairs. It’s a little bit bigger and it’s still kind of it’s a studio that is not a studio at all. You know, the soundproofing is, you know, just enough. We have a couple of treated rooms. Mostly it’s like, let’s put our shit in here and let’s make records, you know, and that’s what we’ve done. We have a big live room, which is a living room. But it’s like the kind of room when I first walked into it, it was like Black Sabbath would make a record here. Or like or The Who would have made a record. Something very British about this house. And I liked, I liked that part of the evolution for what I do and for this for this business. So that’s where we’ve been. And I’ve got again my partner and engineer Guido. His name is Guido Falaveni, and he is a gentle giant. He’s he everybody loves him.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: And so it’s a it’s really important to have a really good energy when you come in here. It’s it’s mostly about a good vibes, good energy, and you know, capturing something as a result of that.

Matt: The the all these moves over the years, obviously there’s a challenge to that because you get used to one spot and you accumulate so much gear and cabling and infrastructure, and then you gotta pick all that shit up and you gotta drop it into a new place. which can be expensive over time. D have you are you have you just not been in the position or or or

Eric: Yes. Yes.

Matt: desired to own a building and establish like a permanent location.

Eric: You know, that is a very good question. I had a couple of opportunities over the last few years to, you know, at least have the discussion of, you know, buying something or building something out. but financially it just it didn’t make a lot of sense. And for me, it’s never really been it hasn’t been about that. You know, it’s about I’m try I try to keep my overhead as low as I can. If that makes sense. Like the overhead has to be because I’m, you know, again, I’m married. We have a house. You know, and it’s I want to keep those two things separate. You know. and that’s not to say it won’t happen or it couldn’t happen. It just has not happened yet. And

Matt: Right. Well, and and and I’ve kind of over the years I’ve really emphasized how I always thought the best way to do it is to to own the building. But as as I get older I realize that in some situations, depending on what your goals are, it’s not always the best solution because one thing that you you don’t carry with you as the renter is all the responsibility for the building maintenance. necessarily well it depends. I have some friends that rent and they seem to have to deal with the air conditioning, which I just don’t understand. But yeah, I I I’m not sure what the situation is there. Or maybe, you know, there are situations where some of us are trying to mitigate our interaction with the landlord because we don’t want to rock the boat. So some I know some people are doing a lot of their own maintenance to keep the landlord happy and keep them off their back because the deal is

Eric: Exactly. I don’t either. Right. Which I understand.

Matt: ‘Cause the deal sometimes is just too good.

Eric: Right. And not everybody likes the idea of putting a studio in their space of their building. You know, there, there is that. You know, when I when I met with the the wonderful people who own this house, who happen to be in their 90s, by the way. they’re incredible, you would never know. But I met with them, so my wife found this on Zillow of all things, and I was like, this can’t even exist. It’s just too perfect. You know, it’s in the middle of nowhere. We’ve got chickens outside. You know, I have chickens here. It’s amazing. I met with them, they were lovely, and I told them what my plan was. I said, listen, I this isn’t gonna that I I’m I’m gonna probably be the first tenant that you’re gonna have here that I don’t want to live in this house. It’s not for a living. It’s I you know, I would really like to put my business in. And they’re like, wait a minute. And I said, Hold on. I said, I’ve been in business for nearly 20 years. I have good, you know, good character references. There’s a trail of 20 years of great testimonials, you know, that speaks to my character, you know, and the kind of work I do. So, you know, it was it was a tough sell, but the, you know, the next day they came back and they were like, you know what? We like you and we love the idea and we would love to rent the house. So right, so this house is now, this house is dirt floor, you know, and it and it’s awesome. And the family, I’ve become close with.

Matt: Right.

Eric: all of the members of their family and they love you know what we’re doing here. You know, it’s a 19 it’s built in 1933. So it’s been around for nearly a hundred years. And this is safely the first recording studio that’s you know been in it up to now.

Matt: That is a for those landlords that don’t have exposure to it, the recording studio concept can be a a scary one because they have their own imagery and and ideas of like, is this gonna be a big drug in and you know, all their worst figures. So did you you you say you had to do a bit of sales to get to get it across the finish line there?

Eric: Exactly. I did, and you know, going back to what you were just saying, you know, I have I’m super strict in how I do things and how I’ve always done things like it’s tough because I I’m gonna try to pick my words carefully, but I I loathe the very thing that I am. I don’t know if that makes sense. There’s a certain there’s a certain Stereotype that comes along with being a musician and an artist. Okay. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a successful artist or an artist that is scraping by. There is, and I’ve witnessed it. I mean, I’ve I’ve been around it, you know, and it’s that sort of you know, the delusional aspect of it all, you know, the drug part of it, you know, that that part of it, the you know, the tortured.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: artist aspect. There are just so many things. There are stereotypes. Maybe I should have just said stereotype. When I speak with an artist or a band and we talk about working together, there are, you know, it’s sort of a vetting process for me. You know, I’ve turned down projects just because I’m like, okay, this is just going to be, you know, I can’t deal with the the ego or the delusion or just the vibe that I’m getting. I I would just rather work with this guy who’s a a dentist who wants to make an album who like agrees to my budget. I would rather I would rather do that and be able to go home at the end of every day and just feel light as a feather than feel so drained of ha about having to, you know, sort of cater to the whims of this tortured artist. And they’re not all that way, but

Matt: Right.

Eric: But I get to kind of pick and choose the situation. And that’s why I really love what I do, is I don’t have to deal with that stuff. I deal like I have a, you know, I’m I start my day at 9.30, I wrap it up at 530, I go home.

Matt: Bankers Hours.

Eric: It is. And I have a c I have a couple of other engineers that will work nights that’ll take on their own sessions or will get their, you know, you know, they’ll piggyback on my rate and they’ll work nights. So this place is h this place is humming along. So when I’m not here, I can be home and we could be, you know, we’re making music.

Matt: Yeah. So do you feel financially like it’s ki it’s carrying its own weight or is it is it a struggle month to month?

Eric: It does, you know, it’s just having this conversation with a good friend of mine who owns a business. He is a picture framer, owns a really great picture framing business and sends frames all over the world. He’s busy like you wouldn’t believe. Yeah, and we can be busy and it’s great. And it’s like I don’t profit. Like it’s having this conversation, in fact, with my wife last week. And it was like, I was like, no, I don’t, I don’t profit. I mean, I I make a living. I make my living.

Matt: Isn’t it insane?

Eric: And some weeks are better than other, or some months, I should should say, are better than other months. it’s just the way it it is, but I get to do what I love. And it’s been the it’s been the best year I’ve ever had. I will say that. It’s been the best year. And it’s incrementally been a, you know, each year has been better than the year before because now I’m starting to utilize other engineers who will work their own sessions. And again, my rates, I have a certain, you know, I’ll pr if I’m producing a record and I’m playing instruments on it, it’s got its own it’s got its own rate. And I also have a body of work that goes back far enough to where I don’t have to sell that anymore. And I don’t have the patience to even try. I’m like, listen, this is how much it costs. And you know, I I I not in a discount business. I’m not in a discount business. I’m I’m This is the business I’m in. And, you know, if I go to a therapist, I won’t I won’t even or to anything, a doctor, or to if my daughter, let me start this again. Let’s edit. You know, if my daughter is taking lessons and she’s taking cello lessons and the cello lesson is $100 an hour. And this instructor is well respected and has great reviews. Do I want to go to that instructor or do I want to go to the $25 an hour cello instructor that has no reviews? I’m not really sure. There’s nothing, I can’t find anything on them. Naturally, I just I don’t care. I want to go to the best. That’s who I want to go to. And that’s my the way I think. That’s my school of thought. You know, I’ve worked hard enough over the years and This is where my price point is. And it’s not that way if they just need an engineer. There’s a whole other, there’s a whole other menu. There’s the hourly, there’s a, there’s a you know, a full day budget, and then there’s a whole project budget. So there are like two or three different you know, sort of budgets to work from. And we work from a proposal. So I often will put a pen to paper and write out a proposal.

Matt: Right.

Eric: Which will include mixing and mastering, you know, all of that stuff.

Matt: Let me ask you about this. So this this place is you said it’s out kind of in the middle of nowhere, right? And it’s a house. So it’s got a proper kitchen, right? So do you try to make it so that the artist can show up and everybody just stays there all day? So they’re you know, from a hospitality perspective, from a food perspective.

Eric: Yes it is, yeah. It sure does, yeah. Yes. A thousand percent yes. so it’s it’s been over a decade now since you know, since the cabin and now into this house where you know that finally took hold. It was that caribou ranch mentality for me, or or Shangri-La, or any of those places where there was a level of hospitality and making yourself at home, where you’ve got, you know, bedrooms if you wanted to stay for an extended period of time. So again, we’ve got The two bedrooms here at this house. So we’ll have artists come in from, you know, I we just finished an album with an artist from Colorado, and she was here for a whole week, stayed here for a whole week. So I show up for work in the morning, and you know, she’s in the kitchen and it smells like bacon. She’s drinking her coffee. She’s, you know, and they’re fully fully immersed in the process. And that is my favorite way to make a record. I know it’s not.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Eric: the norm and it’s not not everybody can can afford to do it that way. But that’s the ideal way of of making a record for me. but even if an artist comes in for like a day or two, you know, they have we have the whole kitchen and it’s the hang and it’s you know, it’s that cozy vibe. It’s not a clinical, you know, sterile environment.

Matt: Yeah, you know, this is just a relevant discussion of late with some phone calls I’ve been having with people. And there’s an episode I did with Daniel Holter, who is you know, up in Washington in in Seattle. And when I went over to his place at his studio, man, he really he was trying to make sure that the band that was coming off the road had all the little creature comforts. whether it’s you know chips and candy to you know personal items whether you know tampons or dry shampoo or like things that like if you’re if you’re getting off the bus or you’re the coming out of the tour van, you show up you’re just like man I just need to chill and yeah you have something to eat. Like he’s like he’s got like all kinds of like whether it’s the healthy to the unhealthy and

Eric: That’s amazing. Really? Yeah, that is something to aspire to for sure.

Matt: You know, like I just I love that. I I love that emphasis on really making it so that when they show up, they just feel like they’re they’re comfortable.

Eric: Right. And I think, you know, when they’re comfortable, when the artists are comfortable, you’re going to get the best out of them. You know, the fun element, you know, is at the forefront of it all, you know, because you know we’re all in it together. We all want the same thing. And I think it you’re right. It definitely starts with the hospitality. It really does. That’s a a tremendous thing. I mean, I know that I go to the we have a Dollar General, which is like get 10 minutes from here, so I’ll do the unhealthy, the bags of chips and the and the seltzer to the seltzer waters and

Matt: yeah.

Eric: you know, popcorn and you know, any mostly anything they could want. I haven’t I haven’t gone the tampon route yet, but but you got me thinking about that. Maybe maybe my next run.

Matt: Right. R yeah, yeah. I and I wouldn’t even know what Tam wants to buy, but you know, obviously there’s people you can ask you can ask these questions and make sure that, you know, you’ve got a fully stocked, you know, closet. I just like

Eric: I wouldn’t be in there. Yeah. Yes. We have, we do, we do, not to interrupt, but we do what’s cool, and this is an interesting, a really nice touch, is you know, we have these chickens here. So at the end of every session, everybody gets eggs. Everybody gets a half a dozen eggs and the and the little pulp container has our dirt or the dirt floor logo on it. So at the end of every day, whether it’s an artist that’s come for just a day or they’ve come for a few days, everybody gets eggs.

Matt: that’s I love that.

Eric: From our very own hands that like sometimes show up in the house. It’s that kind of thing here.

Matt: Well, and it’s and it’s the idea that, you know, I guess, you know, I think we all know it’s common sense. An artist wants to show up to a place that’s like they’d rather show up to r to a resort or to a to a nice hotel than to a doctor’s office. So to create the environment that is the antithesis of the doctor’s office, I think is is important.

Eric: Yes, indeed. Exactly. Yeah. And I wanted we wanted to make sure, and I’ve wanted to make sure, you know, all for all of these years that, you know, the comfort element was at the forefront of all of it. And and again, it comes from being in studios myself that really they didn’t quite get what I was going for. You know, aside from my experience at Sear Sound, which was very, very, you know.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Eric: That was a one-off. You know, I done a lot of recording even in my teens and early 20s, and it wasn’t the studios and it wasn’t the engineers. All those people were great. In fact, you know, one of the studios I would go to as a teenager is still he’s still doing it. He’s an older guy now. he was awesome. He took he like he would let me go in there at midnight and he would work with me because he believed in my talent. You know, he believed in me. but it just wasn’t really getting what I was hearing. It was either too much. Or not enough. If that makes sense. Like it just wasn’t what I was hearing in my head. And what I was hearing in my head was like really kind of like that Laurel Canyon 70s sound, you know? It was a little bit of everything. It wasn’t, it wasn’t too much. But it wasn’t, you know, it’s hard to explain what the sound is, but you know exactly what that sounds.

Matt: Yeah. when you say Laurel Canyon, I know what you’re talking.

Eric: Yeah, there’s just something a little gritty about it. It’s like that stuff you l yeah, it’s all that stuff you would listen to from that era. and that’s the stuff I that I that I feel like I specialize in here in New England. You know, and and being where I am in Connecticut, in this actual location, I’m right between Boston, right between between Boston and New York, less than two hours from both of those places, from both cities and near Providence and You know, Vermont. So it’s a really great place to be. It really you know, it looks like it’s in the middle of the nowhere, but it isn’t. It’s pretty easy to get since.

Matt: Well, that’s the beauty that’s the beauty of that part of of the US is that those areas are so within close distance of each other, you know, and and like hubs, each and every one of them, and special as well. and also we we we can’t forget to say that, you know, not too far from you, you know, power station New England, you know, Evan has been on the show, and and and he’s a he’s a friend of yours. So we wanna we wanna say

Eric: Yes. Yeah. Yes. He certainly is. Evan is one of my my best friends in the world.

Matt: Yeah. so it’s you know, there’s there’s there’s a bit going on in in these little Nicks and Crannies of of New England, of course.

Eric: You know. It’s true. You know, I have to tell you, here in Connecticut alone, you know, we’ve got a rising tide, sails all ships kind of mentality. Because that’s how you have to be. And, you know, like I said to you earlier, not every project is ready or is not every project is right for me. I will speak with somebody about a project and they may not be right for me. So I have a lot of friends in this area, whether it’s evident. At power station, or you know, I’ve got a friend named Tracy who owns a play a studio called On Deck Sound. There’s Greg at a place called Firehouse 12 in New Haven, which is an incredible place. There are lots of studios and lots of great producers and engineers in this area alone. And we will send each other projects. You know, they may say, like, hey man, I got a project. It’s right for you. You want it? Like, yeah, I’ll take it. And that’s a great thing to be able to have such a great relationship with these people who are in the same business rather than like, hey, fuck you, man. This is mine. You know. It’s not like that. It’s really a really wonderful scenario here.

Matt: Right, right. Well, we’re out of time. I’m gonna put obviously the usual links in the show notes for everybody. And man, I’m so happy to to meet you and to get to know your situation. And once again, I wanna I wanna thank Chaz Root for that introduction. so audience, it’s the usual, you know it. It’ll all be there for you. So

Eric: Ain’t here, Matt. Thank you, Chaz.

Matt: please check it out. And hey, if you’re in new the New England area and you need a studio, please reach reach reach out to Eric. thanks again. Great to great to chat and I’ll see you in person at some point in the future.

Eric: Matt, thank you so much.

Matt: Well, thank you. Take care.

Matt: Lorenzo, welcome to the podcast. Here we are, Saturday morning.

Lorenzo: Yeah, all good.

Matt: Saturday afternoon for you. And could you give us the state of the state? Who are you? Where are you? And what do you consider yourself?

Lorenzo: Yeah, I’m Lorenzo Wolff. I live in Queens and work in Brooklyn. and I’m an engineer, producer, studio owner musician.

Matt: Okay. Fantastic. Where did you grow up?

Lorenzo: I’m from a town called Nyack, New York, that’s like 45 minutes north of New York City. It’s like a little river town that has a lot of kind of expats from the city, a lot of artists who kind of came up there to have kids or get more space. so it it had a pretty good music scene actually, Nyack, and it was integrated. It was like 40% black and 60% white, so there was like cross communication between Musical cultures in a nice way.

Matt: Sounds like a great place to grow up. when you were growing up, what was the role of music or technology in your household with your family?

Lorenzo: Yeah. Hmm. well, so my mother is a choreographer and my dad is a writer who writes a lot about music and the way that music intersects with history, sort of. So there was a lot of music being played, there was a lot of talking about music, there was a lot of sort of like tracing the origins of stuff. Like if I came home with a new artist that I liked, it was almost always a conversation with my dad where he was like, Well That’s cool, but have you heard these three artists that they were listening to who informed them? I in an in in a less pedantic way than I’m describing it. But yeah, it was nice. I could li I had a really close relationship musically with my dad. We got he shared he bought me thirty six chambers like the year it came out. So I think I was seven listening to Old Dirty Bastard.

Matt: Wow, I I love that he would get you into these conversations to really examine the history and the and the lineage of all of this stuff.

Lorenzo: Yeah, and because he comes from a perspective that’s pretty that’s a lot about class and s the social problems that inform music, it would always be like, Well, you can’t listen to Al Green without knowing about the Black Panther Party. So it was like sort of the way that things communicate with one another.

Matt: That’s super cool. And your mom was a choreographer.

Lorenzo: Yeah, so yeah, she she was making dances all the time. There was all these weird dancers coming in and out of our houses. She had a a Czech dance troupe for a little while. So I there’s photos of me as a young man being thrown around by this guy named Peter, who was a Czech dancer. And the music that she danced to was it was all different, but there was a lot of like she made s a lot of Springsteen dance to Springsteen and girl group stuff and Lee Dorsey and stuff like that. So they both of my parents really loved. American music and the and collaborated with it in their art forms, even though neither one was a musician is a musician.

Matt: It’s interesting. Did you get interested in music first and from a as a player?

Lorenzo: got interested in music. Well, I I grew up listening to hip hop, so I got interested I like bought a couple of turntables or I had my my grandmother bought me turntables for Christmas and I never figured I liked hanging out at the DJ store, but I never figured out really how to manipulate them. And then I was listening to the Fugees and the Wyclef solo stuff a lot and realized that the live instruments was was often the bass. So Jerry Wonda is like the reason that I got into music. Because his bass lines on all especially the Y Clef solo stuff and the Fugees was always like the live instrument that was happening that was most exciting to me at the time.

Matt: Wow. W when did you start to raise questions about how records are made and the production process?

Lorenzo: I my band when I was twelve went and made a record at some tiny studio that was like an older brother’s friend in Williamsburg, back when Williamsburg was sort of like all warehouses and wasteland. And that was the first time we recorded. I think it was a two hour session and we did six songs or something. It was like a if I was twelve, it was two thousand and twelve. It was Pro Tools, but I don’t know I don’t remember what it must have been very early Pro Tools. and I thought that was really cool. And then my next band we would go and record. Like I got into the studio from being in bands. but never until I started like working as a bass player for hire, I didn’t learn really how a studio works. and once I started doing that, I was like, you know, every once in a while I would get a gig as a session bass player in a studio. And I realized pretty quickly that there’s not enough work as a session bass player to be in studios as much as I wanted to be. so I would like, you know, I’d be there for basics tracking and then be gone. and not never learned really how the arc of it happened. So I got an internship through a saxophone player named Steve Elson, who was a friend of my dad’s, who got me connected to a studio on in the Lower East Side called Second Story Sound. That’s like sort of a classical and jazz studio. And I interned there and then assisted there. under a guy named Scott Lehrer, who’s like a really legit like science style engineer and sound designer. so like the first things that he did to get me educated was send me to Lincoln Center Library and was like get the microphone handbook, get the master handbook of acoustics, read all this dry bullshit and and if you still like it, you know, come by and you can wrap some cables. Which was Which was cool to me because it was like it wasn’t like you gotta learn how to clean a toilet first. It’s like you gotta learn what magic is happening and the science behind the magic that’s happening, and then you can clean toilets as well as sort of knowing what’s going on. But it was more like he gave me that homework and I went and did it and learned and then like when I was in the studio with him, even if I was doing menial tasks, I was sort of like, I I I I’ve read about what a decatry is, so I kinda know. I I don’t know what he’s doing, but I know that he’s doing a decadry because I’ve seen it in this book and I and I don’t know why. And he would Scott was really good about letting me ask him questions during sessions and really good about telling me when I couldn’t ask questions. That intern thing where you’re like, Excuse me, what does the space bar do? And he was really good about being like, Not right now, but I’ll talk to you later, after the session or when there’s a break or a or when the band is tracking.

Matt: Was he was a big influence on you, it sounds like.

Lorenzo: He was great. Yeah, I mean, he he’s the most formal education I’ve had in this. and he was like very patient and taught me how to like sort of compete mys comport comport myself in the studio. He taught me how to comport myself in the studio with artists, with other engineers, with people who are above you. to be supportive and an active listener without without intruding too much into the process. So

Matt: Interesting. And he c he came at it from a classical background?

Lorenzo: He he was sort of like downtown New York weirdo music in the 70s and 80s. And then he did a lot of work in musical theater as a sound designer and did a lot of recording like classical and jazz stuff at the studio. He was sort of like Rudy van Gelder style. Things are c things are like pretty clinical, pretty clean. the room is the color, not the equipment, really. Like he there was never he never ran anything through a pedal.

Matt: wow. Okay.

Lorenzo: You know, like not even close to like that world of you know what I mean? Like the the the things that look fun on the YouTube videos were was never a part of his process at all. He’d be like excited about Dante working across the two rooms much more than he’d be excited about a new speaker and a guitar amp.

Matt: Right. Well that’s that’s that’s interesting. back to you playing bass. So I’m you we were talking about the the turntable thing in the beginning. When did I I missed it? When did bass start to enter the picture for you?

Lorenzo: Well, because I was listening to hip hop so much, I was sort of like, What can I do here? So I got turntables and I like, This isn’t really what’s making this music happening happen and I’m not that interested in learning how to scratch. that felt like sort of a secondary world to it. But listening to those records, especially those Fugees records and the stuff that Jerry Wonda and the Outkast stuff, it was always live bass. And so I was like, Well, there’s somewhere there’s a person playing this instrument on these records and I wanna be that person. yeah, I remember hearing the bass line from Waterfall, Don’t Go Chasing Waterfalls, which is like this beautiful through composed, like Jamerson 3.0 style bass line, and being like, That’s a guy. There’s a guy who played that. And I wanna be that guy. And I I you know, I had Bass Player Magazine, his name was Lamarque Jefferson, is LaMarquee Jefferson, I think. And I remember like reading interviews with him and being like, I wanna be that, I wanna be that person. I wanna be the

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo: The supportive guy in the band who is getting to contribute to this music.

Matt: I might be wrong about this, although I’m gonna hedge my bets and think I’m right. This it it sounds like your dad’s dissection and tracing of through lines really tr really you like you embrace that because here you are listening to the records that you’re interested in and finding the people involved and dissecting and understanding.

Lorenzo: Yeah, I mean knowing how things work is in math in high school, when you when I got to the point where they were doing sine and cosine and tangent, I stopped being able to do math because nobody could tell me what they were doing or why they worked. So like if if if I can’t see the sort of system that makes something and the things that contribute to it and make it work, it’s pretty hard for me to get excited about it. Alternatively with music There’s all of these amazing intertwined networks of things that are happening that make the records that we listen to sound like they do. And so you can look at those systems and trace them everywhere. And f for my father, a lot of that was tracing the connections with politics, race, class, which I’m super interested in as well. But I also was like, Well, how do I get involved in this system as a contributor?

Matt: Mm-hmm. So your initial foray into it was via the bass, but did like in your mind, was there an agenda to like, hey, I’m gonna be like as you mentioned earlier, you said, you know, I want to be a session bass player, but then you started to take the turn into the recording side of it. Was your interest in the recording side of it unintentional? Or or did you start to say, the bass isn’t enough? I’m gonna, I’m gonna do audio as well.

Lorenzo: Whoa, the bass isn’t enough. The the the bass is like, the bass is the same as producing records, as far as I’m concerned. It’s like the instrument that doesn’t do anything that some people don’t even notice is happening. the guy really has to know the chord changes and what the song is doing. He really has to know the kick drum pattern. The less he plays, the better, the less they play, the better it is normally. Which it relates to me to being a producer. Like I think there’s a a reason why bass players become producers because you’re sitting there listening to the song, trying not to do too much. And in doing that, you’re given this free time to kind of like look around and think about what the guitar player is doing, what the singer’s feeling while they’re singing, what these lyrics mean. so the yeah the the bass player to making records pipeline makes a lot of sense to me. I I think it’s it’s not the only way obviously to do it. I mean there’s people who get at being a producer by channeling the magic through like a guitar solo, but but bass feels like this really supportive empathetic kind of musicianship that leads to listening to that like not playing an instrument and listening. It’s it’s as close as you get to not playing an instrument and still be in a garage band. And and that’s sort of what being a producer is too, as far as I’m concerned.

Matt: It is interesting that from if if you look at I think there’s a pattern there of bass players and drummers who are the two people out of a rhythm out of out of a band of of players that typically are in the back watching it all. And that seems to be a a constant a constant thing I see. Bass players and drummers find their way in behind the board.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and it it was a great instrument in that like it let me move through a lot of different musical circles. Like I think that I’m speaking of it in the past tense because I don’t do hired work as a bass player anymore. I play bass on the records that I make, but I don’t If someone calls me and says, Do you want to do a club date, I don’t say yes anymore. and they’ve stopped calling. But the Yeah, bass lets you find people across genres and across disciplines because a lot of almost all music, not all music, but almost all music has some kind of low information. And once the bass guitar came around, it seems like it got adopted into almost everything pretty quickly.

Matt: Hmm. Yeah. And and very important instrument in so many types of music. I mean, hip hop, rock, jazz, I mean, everything, really.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, especially in the African American tradition of music where it’s like the low end is the thing that propels a lot of the American African American collaboration in music.

Matt: Very interesting. So back to the studio thing, what’s what’s the progression there? You know, reading books about as you say, books that are dry as shit, about mics and learning about studio etiquette, where do you take that?

Lorenzo: I’d so after that I stopped working in other people’s studios. I did that between when I was eighteen and maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. And after that I just started I had an ex-girlfriend who had an apartment that she wasn’t gonna be in for a year that I turned into a little studio. I had a funny little ex-control room that that’s the live room had gotten turned into some tech startup, but they could kept the control room they rented to me. So I I had I started building my own studios and Or taking over little spaces and then I eventually built my own place, a very small, the one that I’m still in now, that initially was a super small room that I learned how to do the sheetrock and framing and electric for. And then I kept kind of taking over rooms next to mine and expanding until I had a space big enough that I can track full bands and produce music and you know, do a string quartet with the rooms in a way that feels satisfying to me. So yeah, so to go linearly, I I left I stopped working at Second Story Sound and started doing my own little shops. Partially because while I liked working there, there wasn’t a lot of like running shit g through guitar pedals or putting, you know, a Juno through a Leslie. It was a lot of like, here’s how you get the best possible recording of this. the creativity, the scope of the creativity wasn’t Terribly experimental from the engineering side. It was experimental often from the musician side, but the engineering side tended to be like we get a really good capture of this thing. So part of why I broke off and started doing my own places was to have the space to goof around a little bit more and make mistakes and do things wrong.

Matt: But I bet you learned a shit ton from him about the capture and and mic technique.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah. And just like, you know, working pro tools fast, capturing things right. Like because it was a classical and jazz place, there was a lot of instruments that came in that I wouldn’t otherwise have ever seen. You know, like I recorded a French horn on my first session there w when some people probably go their whole career without recording one, you know. It’s like and he was really patient and really understanding and really knowledgeable about like Miking techniques for really capturing those in the best way. All all the various and sundry instruments.

Matt: giggling inside because my youngest son plays French horn and the first time I recorded French horn was for his like auditions and tryouts and stuff like that. And I was like, wow, this is not like recording bass drums and guitar.

Lorenzo: Mm-mm. Mm-mm. It’s a weird one. And then there’s the even weirder ones like like bass clarinet where you kinda can’t do one mic unless you’re really far away. Where like the bell and the pads are different notes, actually. Like the fundamental doesn’t come out the bell, except on some of the lower notes. Like on the higher notes, the fundamental is coming out here and the on the lower notes, the fundamental is coming out there. So the first time I recorded one of those, I was like, why am I missing why is it like Why does it sound gated? And it’s just the mechanics of the way that that instrument works. So that that’s to me was an amazing education in like, what are these instruments? Why do these people play them? And how do you mic them?

Matt: I’m going pause for a second. If for any reason we get cut off, keep your window open there to allow things to just keep uploading. And obviously, I’ll edit this part out. So, one of the things that I haven’t really talked too much about with people, and it seems appropriate in this conversation, is you know, you’re talking about taking over rooms and expanding as rooms become available and framing an electrical. Talk to me a little bit about.

Lorenzo: Yeah.

Matt: Navigating, especially in in New York, is working with landlords, space, the business of that, and how to and especially as an audio professional, like to make to to get done what you want to get done. But of course, you know, everybody kind of looks at audio people kind of sideways sometimes, like, what are you gonna be doing in here?

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah. I I had a broker who sort of turned a blind eye when I first took this space. And I’ve been here for eleven years. So me and the landlords know each other really well and they trust me a lot. I got an email from I’ve been expanding more lately, and I got an email from them yesterday from the landlords who s who said, Your success is our success, which was just like, what a sweet thing from a management company to say to you. I I I have I have all these stories of all these friends that I hear who have this like acrimonious relationship with a landlord, I for me, like sound cookies are the best soundproofing, you know? You like if you make friends with the people who are around you and you kind of like can keep it civil, it’s like twenty D B reduction.

Matt: I’m be doing a session, here’s a box of cookies.

Lorenzo: Exactly. Well now the place is built enough that I don’t have to apologize to the neighbors much. But yeah, initially when I built the place the the live room was, you know, floated double sheetrock and everything. But but the control room was just open to the floor upstairs and it’s an old building from the eighteen nineties. So the you know, if I was monitoring loud, which I did a lot in my early twenties, they the upstairs neighbors who were an art gallery were complain about it. And and yeah, we like it became civil and it at first it was acrimonious and then I went up and de escalated the conflict. And the the person who ran the art place up there was like, you know, there’s people up here trying to make art. And I was like, mm-hmm. I just didn’t say anything because and then she eventually was like, shit, right, that’s what you’re doing too.

Matt: Mm. That that’s interesting. where do you think those diplomatic skills come from?

Lorenzo: Second child, maybe? I I was a young guy with a lot of older people. I played in bar bands as a kid, worked at guitar store and worked for Scott. So I think like interning sort of teaches you how to shut the fuck up and listen and let people vent in the way they need to. The bar bands that I played in growing up was also sort of that way. It was like a lot of big personalities and late nights, and I was like thirteen, fourteen, so there was no room for me to put my foot down. I had to figure out like what people wanted and how to navigate these adult men and the things that they were thinking about, without having the possibility of like puffing out my chest. so yeah, I think I learned a lot from that from Guitar Store was the same way. There’d be like, you know big egos and bad days. They were all boys’ clubs, and so there was a lot of testosterone. Yeah, and I think there’s a lot of benefit in the world to learn how to not rise to somebody’s challenge of who’s more macho.

Matt: I love that. Yeah. Just to sit back, let them vent, and then say, so here are the cookies. I’m gonna be doing a session.

Lorenzo: Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, you don’t even have to say we’re making art too. You can just say I hear you. I hear you. I know you’re making art. Yeah.

Matt: Wow. Wow. Very, very well done. and and so you’ve been in this spot for a very long time. So you you haven’t had to go through the pains of, hey, I put all this money into this place and now they’re kicking me out and I’ve spent this money and now I gotta go spend more money and find a new place.

Lorenzo: I’ve definitely been spending more money, but I haven’t I haven’t had to like give up a build yet. because like my old live room is now the drum booth, because there’s like a maybe 30 what is it, twenty ten by thirty room over there that’s now like the drum booth, ISO booth. Singers can go in there and the live room is a like a twenty by forty big live room. So now that has become the the main tracking space. So every yeah, every iteration has sort of like grown on the first iteration here. And part of that is because these landlords are supportive and I don’t fight with them and I don’t ask for anything hardly.

Matt: Hmm. What about the the chicken or the egg thing when you’re first starting a space? Because to go and get a space, you need to have the income. You need to have the the flow of the cash flow to make it work. But then, you know, sometimes to get the work, you have to have the space. So how did you make that work?

Lorenzo: Yeah. I had a weird situation with a patron who was this very wealthy man who wanted me to work with these artists that he wanted me to work with Steve Forbert and Josh Joplin. I I had been producing records and playing bass and Josh liked me a lot. And Josh introduced me to this patron of the arts who put me on retainer to turn one of Josh’s albums into a musical despite never having written a musical or knowing anything about it. And so he put me on retainer for like it’s it’s not a story that someone else could emulate, I except like talk to rich people. he put me on retainer for a year to write this musical and I didn’t spend any of the money. I saved it and put it into cheatrock over here.

Matt: Wow. That’s brilliant. I’m and I normally I kind of save this conversation for later in in our in our conversation. can you talk to me about your your philosophy of survival and money and your approach to being an audio professional? And you know, basically as I like to say, keeping the boat afloat, like what’s what’s the strategy for you? Obviously, many of us are at work in progress and

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it’s changed over time. You know, when I was playing bass all the time and assisting a little bit, it would be can I get fifty bucks for this gig? How many gigs can I do in a row? will my parents loan me money if I need to do something? And since then I still ask my parents for money sometimes when I need to do something. but often now the situation my relationship to money on a gig level is how What do I need to get paid to feel like I’m being valued more than survival? Like what can if someone is negotiating a rate with me, will I be feel like I’m being taken advantage of or will I feel valued by this person in this way? so in terms of surviving, partially the studio construction has been a way to survive because I have two production suites over there and five over there, and I just built nine more. So my initially the first seven suites here. were to protect for soundproofing from the neighbors, but also they’re priced so that they cover the cost of the rent of the whole space. So the overhead is minimal. It’s gear maintenance for me and occasional purchases, although I’m not buying much gear anymore. the rents that those production spaces pay cover a lot of the cover the whole cost of the rent of my studio.

Matt: When did you implement these production spaces in your process?

Lorenzo: I had these two maybe four or five years ago. and then I built those two years ago. Those ones I actually built not to bring in money, but because they were talking about a metal shop moving in next door and I was like, Well, I I’ll just build rooms instead.

Matt: I I’ve been in in that position with a metal shop next door.

Lorenzo: Yeah, I was like I can’t this not especially ’cause I do a lot of strings and delicate stuff. So yeah, having having someone banging on stuff. but yeah, that that’s sort of like now that’s my survival mechanism. I mean I’d I’d make money through audio and through making music with folks as well, but that’s sort of like a way to take the pressure off of

Matt: Yeah.

Lorenzo: Every space bar bringing in X amount of dollars.

Matt: That’s interesting. And the how do you fill how like, you know, I I understand that, you know, it you can take a space, you can build these production rooms. How do you fill them? What’s the best approach to bringing people in?

Lorenzo: I mean, I do a ton of community stuff here. I do shows a lot at the studio. I do like I did a gear swap for a little bit. I had a residency program in one of the rooms to just like feel like I was giving back something to the community. So in general, I like bring people into my studio a lot in a community building way. And through that, people kind of are like, Lorenzo’s not such a bad guy. I guess, like, if I’m gonna have a landlord, maybe we make it Lorenzo. and it’s it’s an asset for if there’s a production room to have a studio next door that has every instrument you could imagine. You know, like people have come and borrowed a Whirley or a U67 or something. it’s it’s mostly just from not, you know, the same conflict de-escalation thing. You don’t piss off people in your community and You try to be useful to them in some way. You try to be the base player of your community and eventually people start to kind of trust you and wanna work near or around you.

Matt: Yeah. So community is is something that is a focus of your attention.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I’m really proud of New York. I’ve never left here. I really love the musicians who are here in the music community. And it does make me proud the more like when someone says they track something in New York, I feel proud always. And especially my community here around my studio is people who I love and trust. And and I want to be a safe space for them in the same way that if I call them for a session. They’ll listen to what I have to say and hear me even if they disagree. I wanna be the same thing for them in terms of like a a place to come and record.

Matt: So when you’re getting gigs, like w if you were to analyze how the gigs come in, what would you say is is the way that it happens best for you?

Lorenzo: Well, I there’s sort of like in my life, there’s sort of two tiers of gigs. There’s like the big famous people gigs and then the gigs within my community. Sometimes the two overlap. Like initially it was all the gigs in my community. And then this amazing violinist Bobby Hawk hired me to record his strings for a record that we didn’t know what it was, and it turned out to be a Taylor Swift record. And so that that Taylor Swift record made this kind of other stream happen of like

Matt: Mm.

Lorenzo: Because I’d done the Taylor Swift record, my friend Chris Connors was like, well, I can recommend him now for this Kanye record because he has a credit enough that it’s not taking a huge chance on someone who nobody knows. And then through the Ye record, I made friends with Josh Berg, who is an amazing kind of a mentor and an amazing presence in my life. And he connected me. He we became friends through the process of making Donda, and he connected me. with Ms. Lauryn Hill, who I work for now. So there’s like, in that way I can trace the trajectory really directly. In the community gigs, you can trace them all back to one or two gigs as well, but they’re less it’s a little bit more amorphous because it’s like everybody is talking to each other and knows each other. I find that in that world it’s sort of like We want Lorenzo to be a presence on this record because we know him and we love him and he gets great sounds and not we want Lorenzo to be a presence on this record because he did the Taylor Swift or the Yay or whatever. It’s a it’s a little bit less transactional and a little bit more like we’re in this together, we’re making things. If Bill wants a different bass drum than he than I have at the studio, I will make sure that there’s one there for him the next time that he comes back. It’s sort of like, you know, and and he knows that I don’t like you know, the drums to be next to the violin or whatever. You know, like there’s a there’s as much as Bill would like to play drums right next to the violin. yeah, so I I guess in that world it’s more of like a trust that’s built on years of working together and being stable. And in the sort of famous person world it’s a lot more like this person is vetted and doesn’t act weird around celebrities and is really good at their job, but mostly like is able to play well with big famous people.

Matt: So having been an early Fugees fan, you must be like, I mean, working with with with Ms. Lauryn Hill, come on now.

Lorenzo: It the friend The first session was like I I’m not s like I’m a little starstruck most of the time, but I’m like, wow, that’s that person from the T V. W with her with the first time that she sang, I I was sort of like I it I sort of questioned my reality where I was like, That’s that voice from that record. The mics aren’t on, my headphones aren’t on, she’s singing and it’s that voice that I’ve listened to my whole life that, you know, guided me through a lot of my youth and continues to be records that I listen to. So yeah, that was That that was really meaningful to me to be connected to this artist who I cared so cared and cared so much about for so long.

Matt: What a full circle moment for you. I I I would have paid money to been a fly in the wall to see the look on your face.

Lorenzo: For sure. It was the first I think she might have been testing me, but the first week that we worked together was at Germano. it was before I was now I mostly go out to her studio in New Jersey to work with her. But we were at Germano and the hours were like You know, engineers tell these stories about seventy-two hour work stretches. I hadn’t had that much experience of that in my life. And and these weeks were like there was three different studios rented, and we were just working and work. I was sleeping Troy woke me up sleeping on the floor of Studio B a couple of times. It was like very intense. So the awe quickly became like, shit, how do I navigate this intensity of recording with this person who I respect more than almost anyone else in the music world.

Matt: ‘Cause you hadn’t really dealt with any like heavy duty stretches of, you know.

Lorenzo: I I don’t I don’t find that it happens that much in in my world, especially if someone’s renting my studio, they’re very rarely like lockouts where somebody wants me to be engineering for 72 hours at a time or for a week all the time. Yeah, that was it was exciting. I was like, I’m doing that thing that people talk about. how do you do it?

Matt: Wow. That’s it’s a test of on on many levels because you’re dealing with an artist that you have huge respect and and you know history listening to. And you’re also trying to navigate this thing physically of, well, I need to stay on top of my game and like stay up for a large number of hours and accomplish a lot.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah. And be really present. I mean, there was a time at the end of the process where I sort of like tried to get she’s so sharp. She’s like knows everything that’s going on and is really listening and really paying attention, really remembering things. And this was like the first three or four days that we were working together. And I kind of tried to like get the intern on my side in terms of like, You said we had to leave at X hour, right? Like you gotta leave. And she was really quick in correcting me and being like, Don’t do that shit. Don’t you like tell me when to work and when not to work. Don’t insult my intelligence. She like really leveled with me and straightened me out in this way that I think I probably wouldn’t have done that if I had been a little bit more rested. but she she was like, Don’t don’t collude with this with the person working at this studio against me. That’s not that’s not why you’re here. Like, focus and do the work with me. It was a it was a really like stern.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Lorenzo: respectful moment and I I’ve learned a lot from it.

Matt: Yeah. It’s it’s good to get called out on stuff sometimes, like like that. You know, ’cause then you you’re like, right, right, you’re right.

Lorenzo: Big time. Big time. Yeah, and like an artist isn’t especially an artist, she’s running a lot of stuff a lot of the time. An artist who’s that visionary and focused doesn’t need me slowing her down. Like in terms of I I I should be there supporting this thing that’s happening, or saying, you know, I can’t I actually can’t work anymore. Like let me see if I can get someone else to cover for me in this moment because I’m too tired to keep working. And and I’ve done that. now too. I find it like it’s better to be l honest and just say I I I no longer can be good at my job right now. Like let me go home and sleep for eight hours and I’ll come back and be ready to do it tomorrow.

Matt: Yeah, I’m sure that that honesty is much more appreciated.

Lorenzo: Yeah, lying to the artist is like it’s just so tacky and people I see people do it relatively often where they like do the that there was that Leland Sklar thing where he was talking about the fake switch on his bass, and I was like, I love the way you play, you’re an amazing bass player. I I don’t like we don’t need to do this though. We don’t need to be lying to each other in terms of what’s actually happening in the studio. I understand like the placebo effect is funny and cute, but like if you flip a switch on your base if I’m like asking for something to sound different, I want it to be a real collaboration that we’re having with one another. And that I made that mistake on that session with Ms. Hill where I was like, I’m not telling the truth to one of the people in this room. And I got called out on it. And and I try not to do that anymore. Sometimes sometimes if you’ve forgotten, if you’ve like done Command Z at a really bad time, you’ll be like, I think we should do one more take. I think I think that’s still morally okay.

Matt: Yeah. Ha ha ha.

Lorenzo: Like that was a good one. I think we can do one more.

Matt: Yeah, let’s yeah, probably for safety, let’s just have another one. when these you know, the Taylor Swift thing, Lauryn Hill, like any any any of these more high profile projects that come in, do you do you have you seen it materialize into further gigs as a result?

Lorenzo: Yeah, totally. Totally. Ye with yeah, sometimes with the same artist and often because of that artist like the I got recommended for the Kanye thing because I was trustworthy enough on the Taylor thing that the guy who was recommending me was like he’s gonna be okay. sometimes it it also moves like people see that you’ve done something with this person and they’re like, I wanna be connected to that world. I admire that artist, I care about what they do. How do I align myself with someone who has worked with them. so that happens sometimes too, where someone calls up and says, I want strings like the strings on folklore. How do we do it? And I say, get me and Bobby and we’ll do something like that. so yeah, sometimes it moves like sort of in that tier and sometimes it moves sort of like into the community of other people who are interested in that sound.

Matt: When when you say, you know, they they trust you and that you’re gonna be okay, could do you think you could articulate what does that mean really and when we’re looking at the bigger picture? What do they mean by he’s gonna be okay?

Lorenzo: Yeah. Like you’re you’re first of all, you’re great at what you do, right? There’s like an understanding that if you’re in those rooms you know what you’re doing. But almost more there’s a lot of people who are great at what they do. Almost more important than that is that you’re gonna get in the room and not be like, you gotta hear my beat. let’s collab on a song. Can I put your picture on this team? Like I I think people at that level are being asked for so much all the time in terms of collaborations or commitments that like the

Matt: Mm.

Lorenzo: the more that you can not participate in that ecosystem, the more pure your relationship with a person like that can be.

Matt: I get it. And it I can’t even imagine like getting a gig and then saying, you gotta hear my beat. We gotta collab. It’s like, no man, just get capture the vocal and do a great job and support it.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean I I think it’s it happens a lot though, I think. I think people are really ambitious and I admire that people are so ambitious and people want things to happen really fast. And sometimes you’re like, Well, now I’m in this room with this person, I might not be back tomorrow. How do I solidify my relationship with them? my experience has been that you solidify it by doing a good job and being around for it, but I think it is tempting to say I’m doing this tribute album, will you come sing a song on it? you know, d will you be a part of the can we align ourselves with one another in this way, especially when someone is really talented and really charismatic and exciting and someone you trust and respect. So I could see I could see the temptation to want to collaborate further with someone that you really adore.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah, and you’re you’re fortunate that you you’ve you’ve been granted these these opportunities and risen risen to the challenge. It’s it’s very cool. do you deal with interns in your particular studio?

Lorenzo: I’m so bad at it. I’m so bad. I really need to get bad. That’s a skill that I would like to learn. I had such a great experience of being an intern that I would love to find an organic collaboration with someone who really wants to do something like what I do. my experience has been that I’m really bad at not just doing it myself. I’m really bad at Communicating ahead of time what I’m gonna need from an intern. I’m overworked to the point of like, if I cannot answer an email, I feel better. So I I’m sort of like the bandwidth for navigating an intern I haven’t found yet. I’ve had them, they’ve come and gone. Some have been great, some I probably like could have developed a relationship that would have turned into a really good collaboration with, but I find that I often don’t have. the space or energy to do it, really.

Matt: I’m the same way. Like I just, you know, my my particular situation is is I’m in my home working most of the time, unless I’m at a s at a studio. But even at a studio, like it’s just so much faster to do it on your own. But I know that there is kind of a a a a wise and responsible thing to do to bring in new people and show them.

Lorenzo: Yeah. Yeah, and for myself, I’m starting to feel the sort of limitations of what one person can do on their own in a once the machine gets this big. Like there does there does need to be someone else. Like I did a show last night at the studio. I’m doing a show tonight at the studio, like I’m gonna be moving the chairs, I’m gonna be running the cables, I’m gonna be taking out the garbage. the not just The energy level is hard to keep up the energy to do those things that I really don’t you know, I’ve done since I was an intern and I don’t much want to do anymore. And then the the optics of crawling around on the floor in front of an artist is not always it doesn’t always feel that good.

Matt: I could see that. Definitely. you know, you talked about the the community. Do you when you t when you speak about the community, are you speaking of it from a perspective of mostly musicians and artists, or are there engineers in that community?

Lorenzo: Yeah, there’s more engineers than there used to be. I c I kind of came at it from a musician forward perspective in That like the musicians that I was collaborating with, I had played bass on something that they did, I had toured with them, whatever, and then it became we should go to Lorenzo to record, he’s a cool guy, he’s a pretty good bass player, his studio doesn’t look too too bad. At that time it was really like we can put up with his studio in order to like not have to hang out with somebody else. now it’s not that much that way anymore. but yeah, now there’s much more Rocky Gallo, who was on your podcast who I think maybe connected us is I talk to him on phone every day and we have these kind of like bitch sessions that are like what’s it like to be an engineer today for you? How do you feel? What is how does the money work? Does the money work? Is our job a real job anymore? So yeah having Rocky in my life to collaborate to talk to it that feels like community to me. That yeah it feels a lot like community to me.

Matt: yeah. Yeah. I’ll put a link in the show notes to to Rocky’s episode so people can get that perspective as well. So what

Lorenzo: Rocky’s like this fucking guy Lorenzo calls me every day. Every day Lorenzo calls me. Such a pain in my ass. It’d be amazing if that was his podcast episode.

Matt: How can you get this guy to stop calling? I’m trying to change my number. what do you find is really, really I mean, we can bitch about a number of things, but really at the heart of it, what do you think are the real challenges to this, to this as to this job, to what this audio thing we do, this production thing?

Lorenzo: Yeah. Mm. I think for me at least, it’s about like keeping the urge to want something to be better strong. And not just for me, but for the artists as well. Like keeping the curiosity and the excitement of something being a little bit better than it was before, instead of making something easier or more fluid or more intuitive, you know. reaching for something being as good as it can possibly be, or as fast as it can possibly be if that’s the thing that this project needs. But not getting not letting the dust settle on the bridge of the song and if like the the you repeat a word in the verse or that the patch bay is not labeled or that you don’t know the shortcut for bounce the track out so you do it this one funny way every time. Like there’s these sort of ruts of Both the technical and the artistic that are easy to if you’re a relatively capable person, you can sort of work around them and keep doing a pretty good job at your job. If to I find that the times that I’m most excited about this are the times where I’m like, Well, today I’m gonna do like faders up for the monitoring thing instead of monitoring in the like for a jazz session and like label the whole board and really, you know

Matt: Mm.

Lorenzo: do a board mix for playback, even though it’s never gonna go anywhere and when I export it, I’ll just go to one two and bounce them. Like I was like, yeah, I’m making things harder for me, but I’m also like learning and having fun and and I think making things better by making them harder. I I you know, I AI is all we fucking talk about right now, but I do think that like things getting easier doesn’t make it more fun for me.

Matt: Mm.

Lorenzo: There’s things that I would like to be easier. Like I would like to be able to give someone an OMF file and have it be able to be opened in Pro Tools and Logic and Ableton OMF, right? That’s the extension. I’d like for that to work. Like I don’t need I don’t need a cat who’s bodybuilding in a video with his girlfriend. I I like I want to be able to have cross-pollination between DAWs.

Matt: Yeah, yeah. O open media framework, yeah.

Lorenzo: I would like for that to be easier. I don’t think like that being hard is a good thing. But I do think that like making your own cables, at least for a little while, is good. Cause you’re like, that’s hard and it sucks. And now I know how an XLR is wired, and I know that if when it breaks, it’s my wiring that broke. and I think that like stopping the singer, even if someone hires you to track vocals, if you stop them and say, Hey, listen, you know, you’re using this lyric twice. In the same line, like you’re you’re you’re using the word memory twice here. Are you doing that on purpose? Can we stop for a second and like examine that and think about it and make sure that it’s something that we want to do? That’s much harder than saying, really nice take, do you want try another one? so the the pitfall for me, I think, is when is really nice take, do you want to try another one?

Matt: Yeah. Don’t take the are you saying don’t take the easy way out on everything.

Lorenzo: I think so. And it’s so tempting because, like, especially we are in a semi-mercenary field. Sometimes we don’t always like the people that we work with. Occasionally you get a difficult client and you’re like, well, how do I make this easy for me? And how do I get through the day? And especially if you’re working long hours, you’re like, how do I get so I can rest and focus on the next thing that I want to do? But yeah, I think the the laziness is the scariest thing about it for me, is like settling and getting lazy.

Matt: And what about the the aspect of this to you know promote oneself? Because if I I I feel like if you like you could there’s two tracks that I see people take. I see some people take, I’m only gonna do the work, and hopefully the work will speak for itself. And then there’s the people that really You know, I’m not saying that they don’t do the work, but they they also are leaning on the self-promotion part of it, the in the you know, the social media parts, to let people know, hey, I am working on doing stuff. Where do you fall for that?

Lorenzo: I have been better at promoting myself in the past. I’m not I haven’t the I haven’t had the space or the energy to do it much lately. It it feels best to me when I can be celebrating someone else and sort of by association be like, and I’m cool enough that I’m in this room with these people. so in a in a I don’t have the bandwidth to do the talking head thing to like sit at the desk and say, here’s my signal chain. I I just don’t I can’t

Matt: Right.

Lorenzo: It doesn’t excite me. It doesn’t feel like something connected to the way that I want to be in the world. Here I am a talking head on a podcast. but I can’t set up the tripod myself. I don’t feel comfortable setting up the tripod myself. I do feel comfortable when someone comes into the studio and is really cool to be like, wow, look how great they are. And I have like kind of a nice camera set up here and a little like closed circuit thing so I can like capture stuff and be able to celebrate the artists who are coming into the studio.

Matt: Yeah.

Lorenzo: And some of that is self-promotion. You know, you say, like, Charlie Burnham’s here playing beautiful violin. This is I am cool. I am cool. Charlie’s here. I’m cool. because I’m with Charlie and he’s so good. You know, like so so that is not an altruistic, that’s not an entirely altruistic pursuit to celebrate the musicians in my community. Some of it is me saying, and I’m and I am with these people.

Matt: ‘Cause I’m with Charlie. Yeah. you know, I mean, in this day and age, I feel like it’s it’s it’s a necessary evil because there’s so much going on out there that if you want to let people know that you are actively doing work and and for them to take you seriously, sometimes you have to you have to do that to show some social proof to say, no, I I’m I’m here working. Come work with me.

Lorenzo: Yeah, and it’s and it’s it’s not it’s not fake. Like the the Instagram, TikTok it’s it’s the real world too. And it like it is how people connect with one another and how gigs get gotten and how people get excited about what other people make. yeah, I think like maybe I’m thirty six. I think people who were were born around when I was sometimes look at social media and they’re like, Well that’s like Kind of a funny fake thing, but it’s as much a real part of our world as, you know, the the sheetrock screws that I put into the wall yesterday.

Matt: Yeah, I guess I look at it from a straight up business move. It’s a it’s a free promotional tool to reach people. I don’t spend any money on it. So

Lorenzo: Yeah. I I think the trick is to really know what you’re promoting, you know, to be like, Well, am I promoting me as a mixer? Am I promoting my space? Am I promoting me looking hot to get laid? Like there’s there’s a a whole world of things that you can like of messages that you can put out there. I find that if I don’t have a message that I really want to put out there, it doesn’t feel inspiring to me to participate in it. And and when I force it it doesn’t feel right.

Matt: Right. You won’t see pictures of me shooting pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror going, Hey everybody, check me.

Lorenzo: Yeah. What if you look really good though? Sometimes I’ll put on an outfit and I’ll be like, Actually, I either look stupid enough or good enough today that I kinda wanna post a pic I I won’t. But I I have that urge sometimes. You don’t have the vanity urge ever? None.

Matt: No. No. I’m I’m a goofy looking dude, so I’m like, you know.

Lorenzo: When you dress up for a wedding or for the graduation, when you put on a suit, you’re never like, I kinda wanna show people what I look like in a suit.

Matt: Okay, so you know, like I’ll go to recording academy events and if I’m dressed in a suit, you know, I’ve I’ve had I’ve posted pictures of me in in a in a group of my friends, fellow engineers, you know, in front of the Grammy thing and you know.

Lorenzo: Yeah. It’s kind of fun. I could see that being addictive. I could see like getting into influencing because you’re like, I kinda like dressing up and looking cool.

Matt: if yeah, I mean if that’s your thing. But yeah. Yeah, it’s just not my thing. So well, as usual, audience, links will be in the show notes as they always are. And wow, this has been a really good conversation, Lorenzo. I really enjoyed talking with you and I’m I’m super happy to get to know you. Yeah. Well, I’m gonna let you get to your weekend and I’m gonna get to my weekend and thanks again and

Lorenzo: Right. As you can tell yeah. Me too, this was really fun.

Matt: Appreci appreciate your time. All right. Take care.

Lorenzo: Thank you. Take it easy.

Matt: Okay, we’re good to go. So here we go. Gert, welcome to the podcast.

Gert: Thank you. I’m very happy to hear you, be here. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Great to great to meet you. let’s get started with the state of the state. Who are you? Where are you? And what do you consider yourself?

Gert: Well, I live in Belgium, which is a small country in Europe. and I’m busy with music in a professional way for thirty-five years, something like that. I’m a very passion-driven person, so I always want to do things I love to do and I want to make my job out of it. And my main passion is is. Is you I want to say beer, that’s also a passion of mine, but that’s for something later. Beer and music. and well, I’ve done a lot of things. I’ve I’ve worked for a record company. I’ve was a music journalist for three newspapers in Belgium. I’m teaching for the moment two university colleges. I used to teach at four university colleges.

Matt: Well yeah, we’re gonna talk about

Gert: I have a PhD in sociology of music. That’s also one of my main occupations. I’m a musician mys I I worked for an art venue. I did organize concerts in in Ghenton, Belgium. I’m a musician myself, released seven albums. I had a project in the Nilly’s combination of jazz and electronica called Briskey, with which I also had a big band, which we performed all over Europe. right now I make music all on myself in an immersive way. So I’m very into immersive audio, Dolby Atmos. so I create my music in immersive and then I mix and master. Mastering is also something I do for other people. So I’m a I’m a certified mastering engineer. That’s one of my side jobs beside of of of teaching. So it’s I always know it’s it maybe it sounds impressive, but it’s not for me. I’m I’m just busy with my passion and and that’s music. And and I always want to explore music on different angles. So meeting artists by writing about it, by organizing concerts, then performing myself, meeting other people. So I’m always in the run and and and looking for new challenges in in music and maybe I’m I’m bored. too quickly that I do a lot of different things.

Matt: And but did you mention the brewery?

Gert: Yeah, I I also have a brewery. That’s my my other passion. It’s music and beer. and I live at at the countryside in in the Flemish part of Belgium. and when we moved here, it’s about thirteen years ago, my first thing was I want to do something with my hands too, so I cultivated my own hop plants. so I have a small brewery, two hundred liters, it’s very small, and grow my own own hubs and I make my my different kinds of beer from different sorts, blonde beer, dog beer. I’ve got IPAs, I’ve got I’ve got stout beer, different kind of of beer. So that’s for me it’s a bit like making music. It’s also working with with small ingredients and make something which suits people, which is nice, which is beautiful, which is tasteful. and it’s the same with making music. It’s that’s also a combination of different small parts and and making something which is bigger and and can can can be yeah pleasing.

Matt: Wow, we’re like not even five minutes into the interview and I’m totally inspired by you. That’s fantastic. okay, before we go into the beginning and where you grew up and all that business, I want to know how you deal with time management when you do all these things.

Gert: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a difficult difficult thing. Because I can I can stress out quite quickly because I’ve got too much on my mind. maybe I also they say I also have AGHD, so that’s that’s why I have this this very big energy to to keep on doing things. Maybe that helps. but it’s it’s like yeah, just just get get yourself organized in a way. I’ve got a few things I have to do. So I’m teaching at two university colleges in Belgium. Those hours are are blocked and locked. those days are fixed. But in between I’ve got three days. And then when I have a mastering gig, I just do that. If it if there isn’t a mastering gig, I do some mixing myself. I start composing, work in the the hop yard. So it’s really from from day to day. See if there is time, I will I will do something I I I fancy at that at that time. but sometimes it’s just all all together and and and I have to admit, there are nights that I hardly sleep just because my my head is so so active and I have to do this and this and this. And then one thing which is very important for me, I I really like cycling. so that’s my way to free my mind. like within two days I will do a tour of 80 kilometers cycling. I also go to my my school, which is 40 kilometers one way, I do it by bike. with an electric one of course, but but that’s just to to free my mind. that’s when you have a bit too much energy, but then then I can sleep well. Yeah.

Matt: Amazing that you do all of this stuff. well, my next question would be: do you have kids? Okay. Well, there we go.

Gert: No. No, that’s the reason why you can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No kids. And I have a very lovely wife who is really encouraging me and and also she’s also letting me free and and doing the things we do. We do a lot of things together, but but in the meantime I can do whatever I want. And so that’s that that’s very important. I also I all met her when I was thirty. so That was also important that that we have we had already a long history, both of the two of us. She came from from the radio. She she was she she was doing she was a presenter, a host on on national radio in Belgium. and she was hosting a program in which my music was played. So I knew her because she was the host of the program and then we met for the first time and it was yeah, love at first sight. So that that’s important too. Yeah.

Matt: That’s absolutely important. let’s go back to the beginning. talk to me about where did you grow up specifically?

Gert: Mm-hmm Well, you know, Belgium have got has got two parts, a f a French part and a Flemish part. I’m from the Flemish part, which is very crowd. So it’s it’s in in in square meters it’s difficult to explain, but I think you can fit London five times into Flanders, maybe something like that. And there are six million people living there. So it’s very crowdy. and but I was from more of a of a more quiet part of of of this of this country in in a small town with parents singing in a choir my older brother was playing the flute so there was music in the family and so it was easy for me to follow music lessons when i was in in in low low in not in primary school yeah when i was ten years old and because it’s it it’s a small city When I went to study after after college time, went to a bigger city where there was a university there that did sociology. but that city, very beautiful, it’s called Leuven. It’s the biggest university city in in Belgium. but it’s only students. So after that, I moved to Ghent, which is the nicest, one of the nicest cities I know. I’ve lived there for 20 years. It’s just like Bruges, which everybody knows, but Ghent is alive. It’s a very it’s got a medieval castle in the middle of the city center. It’s it’s it’s a it’s like a pig it’s like like a fairy tale. It’s so beautiful city, but it’s alive with a lot of youth, a lot of music, a lot of cinema, theater, also a lot of economy. So it’s a very alive city. And and there I lived for twenty years and and started my whole my whole professional career. but it’s by getting older, and I think we have the same age. I’m from sixty nine.

Matt: Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Gert: Yeah, yeah. I heard you saying in a podcast once that you were fifty-six. that’s the same age age as I am. so but by by getting getting older, I wanted to to have more more a more quiet life. so I went really went to the to the countryside. And if somebody of of of the listeners are familiar with cycling and you know the the famous cobblestone classics in in Belgium, like the Tour of Flanders. That’s where I live. So it’s in in that part of of Flanders with a lot of it’s the hillside. it’s it’s not no mountains, but it’s hilly. Hilly with a lot of cobblestones and and and wadow meadows. So it’s it it’s a nice it’s a nice place, which also brings brings rest in this life.

Matt: When did you get interested in audio or or the creation of you know, the the the recording side, the mixing side, the production side of audio?

Gert: Well, that’s I try to play an instrument first. so I studied the flute when I was a child, because my elder brother was playing flute, and I knew this is the most sexy instrument in the world, so I also wanted to play the flute. but then I became a teenager and I want to impress girlfriend, so I played the guitar and I brought an electric guitar. and I played a lot of guitar. but one day, and that is very important, I because I I’m I’m a big Pink Floyd fan because of my brother, so I played David Gilmour style guitar. And I want to do something else. So I decided I will go to follow jazz lessons. And my jazz guitar teacher, he got one of the first editions of Cubase. I think it’s Cubase two, and I’m talking about ninety ninety one.

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: That time. So it’s really the beginning. And so I went there to to follow some jazz lessons, but I came back with the first cracked version of Cubase. And my brother got an old Atari computer on which you can load in this this Cubase file. And and then I just realized: well, I prefer creating music instead of playing an instrument. And then I st started writing two tunes in in on my my small on this small system. And I also had an old Tascam four track with which I already record some some of my first songs, playing guitar, some flute, some keyboards. I got a rhythm machine, this Bose Dr. Rhythm 500 or 50. What’s the name of it? It’s an old rhythm machine. and that’s

Matt: yeah.

Gert: That’s really the first it was in the nineties, making my own and and I played in a few bands, but I I I realized that playing in a band is fine as long as I could deliver the music. So I’m I’m really an an an yeah someone who who wants to create in even more than just playing together, playing an instrument. so I I I’ve I have my my my biggest moments when I can. make a new tune. And that started in in the 90s. And then I just that’s the reason why I still work with Nuendo today. because I’m working with Cubase since since 90s. So that’s that’s that’s that’s 35 years. So it’s that’s my my second nature. I know the program inside out. and that’s of course important when you create music that it’s an attachment to yourself and it’s not something you have to think about. and

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: And in the beginning I was making music to perform with friends and and to perform live. so in the niles I have I had this band called Briskey. the minimal setup was seven musicians. so and I rich I wrote all the compositions for them and I was doing the sampling and and live electronics and and the conducting because the musicians are mainly professional jazz musicians, highly qualified musicians could play instruments much better than I do.

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: but they played my music and and together we we reshaped it. and then I got this idea to make to turn it into a big band because I was using a lot of big band samples. so I had a 15-piece big band for which I wrote all the arrangements, did a lot of concerts with, and so in the first period was composing tracks, performing live by my musicians. And then there was some yeah this this yeah maybe typical artistic frustration after a while. so after four albums, what what shall be next? shall I make the fifth one, which is more or less the same with the same kind of concerts? I was looking for something new, something fresh, some and and also in in the beginning when I started there w there was this new lounge, new jazz, Saint-Germain hype with which I could profit. so I had my my first gig ever was I even had a live band. My first gig ever was in the Ancien Belgique in Brussels, which is the most famous concert hall in Belgium. And it was just because of my records. The the the guy the programmer listened to my record said do you want to play here? So yes I have to find a band. and that’s how it all started. So I made music myself, but then invited a band and and we grew as a band. but yeah, I was just following my own path and and and my own taste. and maybe maybe that’s different from from another musician or or or normal musician. Is my main profession is teaching. I’m a professor, so I have my income.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Gert: And that is very important. So I have a job which I really love doing, and I’m I I can share my passion with students, which is so great. But that also means that I don’t have to make any compromise at all in making music. That’s just yeah, I have my income, and that’s that’s important. So I was just doing the things I I wanted to do, but it it it wasn’t that popular anymore because it was my music w went more into a cinematic style, more soundscape, and And then I had this frustration and then I decided, well, one of the universities called asked me, do you want to make a PhD? yes, why not? So I started a PhD and in music sociology. and then I started a brewery. And there was a time around two thousand twelve when we came to the place where we live for the moment, when I really thought I will never make music again in my life. Been there, done that. And I’m a brewer s from now on. So I started the brewery, my own hop yard, and I was brewing beer, beer, beer, beer, and teaching, of course, but no music at all. until Corona gets kicks in. the the time when a lot of people were just r yeah, reflecting, and and the same with me, I was sitting in my studio, I rediscovered my studio and said I I’m I’m going to make a new record. But because of the lockdown,

Matt: Right.

Gert: I decided I will do everything myself. So I do the composition, the whole producing, the mixing, the mastering. Mastering was something new to me, and there was really like this this click, wow, this is something for me. Like digging into details and and and and and and and sorting out how sound is working. So mastering that’s it’s made for me. So then I went studying at the mastering academy in Hamburg with Friedemann Tischmeyer, the guy who invented dynamic range. And then I did let followed lessons with Ian Shepherd in London. He was he was also a guest and at your podcast. he was one of my mentors. and then I started my own mastering service after this afterwards. But the main reason was I want to master my own music. That was my motivation to do mastering. yeah.

Matt: Right. You know, it’s amazing just the the thing you just keep piling up activity after activity. And I I love how how like you know, whether it’s beer or teaching or writing or mixing or mass, you know, like it’s unbelievable. Like I could probably come and spend a week with you and just be exhausted. ‘Cause you’re you’re doing so much. But when it comes to the so I wanna understand a couple of things. the teaching. What what specifically are you teaching?

Gert: Yeah. I’ve three two main things. The first part is is music history because I also I didn’t mention but I I wrote four books about history of popular music. so that’s my main that was my main teaching area since since I started teaching 30 years ago. that was teaching popular music history. and then also music sociology because that was my study. that’s one thing, and the other thing is music production. And I teach a few things. One is the introduction course for all jazz and pop students at the conservatory, who are entering the school because they want to play an instrument, and I’m teaching them creating music in the box. So they have to work in a DAW and with soft sins and etc. And I try to to to help them in in creating demos. And that’s in the first year. in the music production department I also teach mastering and I have my own cars on immersive sound. And that’s of course the cherry on the cake. yesterday we had a presentation of our students, because in our students in in this car’s immersive audio, they have to make an immersive track. We have a Dolby Atmos room in in at the university. so that’s the first part creating a track, but then they have to translate it into live and In the city where I’m teaching in Ghent, there’s a venue called Winter’s Circus. And it’s a fully equipped immersive Eliza concert hall, and then have to they have to translate their then to translate their track into an ELISA immersive music project. And yesterday it was the presentation of those tracks, which was so so lovely. I was I was really I I was riding home with with a big smile. and and and that’s why I get my energy. you want to help students and when you see the results and the students are happy and they they thank you so thank you for helping us. that’s that’s the most beautiful beautiful thing there is. Yeah.

Matt: You know, considering the amount of activities you do, how where do you find the discipline to do like for an example, when you when you wanted to get into mastering, you know, you went to Friedemann Tischmeyer, you went to Ian Shepherd, like you, you, you really focused in to figure out like how does this work? How should I be doing this? What’s the approach? How do you find the discipline to do each of these activities well?

Gert: Well, that’s the strong urge to understand something. I really can dig into something until the very smallest detail. for instance, I have a book, not a book where you write with it with pen and paper, like an empty book. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: yeah, like like a journal or or or a notebook.

Gert: Only for the the lessons of of of of of those two mentors. I’ve two of those books written everything down, which I thought which was interesting. And that’s how I do always the translation. So I’m always writing down in in books. I’ve got plenty of them, according to the to the subject. and that’s when I see a YouTube video, when I follow a course, when I see when I heard something new, then I write it down. And time by time I just read all those notes again and and that’s how I memorize it, how how it’s how it’s getting structured inside my head. But that’s really my my my way of of of handling things is by writing it down. in fact I’m very bad in the digital age because internet is too much for me. It’s too much information. and I I really get a lot of stress because it’s too much for me. So I want to slow down and to and that maybe that’s the reason why I focus. Just to have I’m control freak. To have control on different things and and then I can really dig very deep into it. And it’s time by time. So the the the the the year I was studying with with Ian Shepherd and Friedemann Tischmeyer, that was the only thing I did that year. That was one year only mastering from morning until night. and and that’s the same and and afterwards it’s it’s with immersive audio and they’ll be honest. I just wrote a book. on creating and and mixing immersive music. So that means after a lot of reading, but the writing itself was like like four to six months full time, seven, seven, twenty-four, twenty almost w with a few hours of sleep. Yeah.

Matt: So with with Atmos, t talk to me about your journey there and and did you apply the same learning techniques that you did with mastering?

Gert: Yeah. Well, first of all, I I learned mixing by doing mastering. because then finally I understand what a compressor was doing and and other effects because that’s that’s what was a very good perspective just to have the general image and then go into detail. and maybe that’s also my my interest because for for for immersive it started like a lot of people from nowadays When Apple joined the the the the circus and and I could hear specialized audio on on my earbuds. that was my my first encounter. And that’s also one of the maybe the bottom line, because in in my opinion, the when you have a good immersive mix, the headphone experience will be better. And if that’s the only win we have, that’s already worth doing it.

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: So that was a starting point. And then I thought, maybe this can be something interesting. and mastering, I really love doing it, but but also maybe I’m I’m I’m I’m doing too much to to develop it in into a a fully full functioning job, to to get a lot of gigs. I’ve I’ve got some which is fine. but I think maybe there are already enough mastering engineers. I’m very bad in promotion. I’m I’m very good in doing things, but I’m very, very bad at promotion. so so maybe I thought maybe immersive can be can be a big next thing. Let’s let’s let’s dig into that. and then yeah it’s it yeah that’s really one of my my my big problems that I it has to go the all all the way. So only headphones wasn’t enough for me, so that I invested in in small speakers and and that it can can have an immersive setup at home. and from there it all started was just like experiencing and because always say hearing is believing, and once you hear this this immersed sound, then you’re sold. And because of that strong feeling, I th I said no, this is what I want to do. And so I was

Matt: yeah.

Gert: reading and writing and and I I I I think I’ve saw all the YouTube videos on on on immersive and all the atmosphere I I could find. I’ve I’ve I’ve bought all the books on immersive you can find on Amazon for instance. And then I’m studying and writing down and then I think maybe I have to do something with it. So and then the advantages when you when you’re when you work at the at the conservatory music higher music education then it just s suggested to to the school but maybe I can do Cars on immersive audio. yeah, okay, great. well, not from the beginning, but after a while, because I was come on, please, let’s do it. Let’s say finally, yeah, okay. it’s your ball, ballpark, and and just do it. and and that was the the the the urge to or the the motivation also to to write the book because I didn’t find a a good handbook for for the students, so I thought, maybe I’ll write it myself.

Matt: Yeah. Exactly.

Gert: But but that’s that’s how and it it all sounds more special than it really is. I’m just again busy with my passion and and and I want to to dig into things and and I’m I’m happy when I can can explore something and and and find some relationship between things that really gives a feeling of of satisfaction and that’s why I write books and and and I’m teaching. That’s I I’m always looking to to to connect the little the little dots. and and then I just thought, yeah, if I if I spend all this time in in studying immersive sound, maybe it’s good to to to collect everything in in one book. And and if this book can can help people then then I’m I’m very grateful.

Matt: and I do want to talk about the book, but before we do that, I want to ask you when you are researching anything and you’re reading, first off, are you are you do you do you read a lot of books? Okay. I I have trouble if it with certain books, it it depends. Like I get bored really easily, like I can do audio books.

Gert: Yeah. Yeah. A lot.

Matt: like any day of the week because I can it’s that listening is easy for me. Reading the light has to be great and I have to be comfortable and it’s just if there’s any distractions, it it becomes very difficult for me to read. I’ve I’ve discovered and So you don’t have that problem and you can easily read. When you do read, do you take detailed notes like you do okay, yeah.

Gert: Yeah, and and it’s I already told you I have H D H D R D R D H A S D, yeah. right?

Matt: A yeah, well ADHD?

Gert: A D A D H D, yeah, yeah. R D R D A D H D yeah. and

Matt: A attention deficit hyperactive disorder.

Gert: Yes, that’s it. That’s it. And that makes it difficult for me to read books on a computer. Because there’s always flickering and it’s always scrolling and there’s always new information coming in. Maybe an email is coming in. And does it that is very distracting for me. So when I read a book, I’m not online. I’m offline. I’m in my in my in my in my living room and I’m I can concentrate on the things I’m reading. And that’s that’s the only way in which I can yeah really concentrate because otherwise I’m always distracted. I’m distracted by everything. And so I have to close myself and the book is is helpful for for me. And then I take a lot of notes first with a with with a pencil I I I I I make some marks in in the book and then I reread it and sometimes I write it down in a new book with all the all the the most important things and that’s maybe that’s a reason why i love to write books too because it’s very difficult for me i also have got the dyslexia dyslex yeah okay so writing is difficult for me but even then i’ve got the strong urge to yeah just to to connect everything

Matt: Dyslexia, yeah.

Gert: Maybe that’s because there’s so much happening in my head that it w that I want to find ways in which I can structure it for myself. And one way to do it is is is writing a book or or teaching about it. Because when you’re teaching, you have to structure all your thoughts. and I learn most of the things by teaching on it. And because you have to explain it and talk it loud and and there are questions, and suddenly I realize, I didn’t know this, I didn’t know. I have to look it look it up. Sometimes say to the students, well we will discuss this further next week. And in the meantime, I’m I’m studying because I want to know the answer on every question. And that’s my motivation. And and and and yeah, and reading, writing, teaching helps me in in in structuring. And because I need it for myself, for my health. it’s also profit for me as an as a profession, and because I made my living out of doing this.

Matt: I I I think it’s really important that you the fact that you understand that you have dyslexia and ADHD and understand the the potential pitfalls of those two those two diagnoses and understanding what you need to do to make it so that things are organized. And I love that.

Gert: Mm.

Matt: you you go that you go offline to really focus that’s that’s really interesting so let’s talk about your book and because of your fantastic setup there could you flash your book up on the screen for our YouTube viewers look at that stereo was a nice try creating and producing immersive music okay that is great so in creating this book what is the goal

Gert: Mm. Yeah. Here it is.

Matt: for you in this book.

Gert: Well, this the title is is self ex explainable explorable. No. yeah, indeed, that’s the word. Yeah, English is not my mother language, so excuse me for that. Yeah. because when when I’m working in immersive audio and also at school with colleagues of mine and people you meet in the music industry and musicians, there’s a lot of hesitation when it comes to immersive Odolpia.

Matt: Explanatory. Self explanatory. Yes. I I I no, I totally get it, yeah.

Gert: it’s like, yeah, we’ve heard about it, but it’s not let’s wait and see. maybe it will go over, but we’re still fine with stereo. so to begin with, I want to persuade people, well, stereo was a nice try. It’s it’s it was good because we didn’t had any anything that was better. But now there is something which is better. So it’s time to explore that and embrace it. so the first chapter in my book is all the 13 reasons why Dolby Atmos sucks. So all the critique I hear, that’s my starting point. And then I try to give counter-arguments to say, well, maybe, but look at on the other hand, it’s this. And I think the central point in in in everything I do, and also in the book, is W when it’s when it when we’re talking about immersive music, I’m not that much interested in reworking an existing stereophile into a Dolby Atmos project. No. I’m interested in creating music in an immersive way right from the beginning. And I strongly believe that the real future of this format is when artists start to think immersive. And that’s my main goal of the book. Let them think about what is possible. So I’m I’m very interested in in the creation process. So it’s like recording with multiple microphones, but also working with virtual instruments in an immersive way. how can you use those in an in an immersive setup? And and then make a project which is and I’m I’m telling immersive because it’s more than Dolby Atmos. Dolby Atmos is a most well-known format for the moment, for the moment. But it’s one not the best one. And maybe it won’t be the one for the future. We don’t know. But the most important thing is to be future-proof and just make something which is immersive. That means work in multi-channel groups, multi-channel buses, work in in object-based, in channel-based, and scene-based, with with ambisonics. And when a project is finished, then you can decide what you’re going to do with it. You can turn it into a Dolby Atmos. But you also can turn it into Eclipse when YouTube will start broadcasting Eclipse. Maybe that will be the next big thing. Who knows? I don’t know. If you want to have a high quality audio file, well go to Auro-3D, which is a very good format too. If you want to make a live performance and you want to change it into ELISA for a live system in ELISA or in DOB or or mayor sounds, you can do it.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Gert: So it’s like one project in and and you also can make a stereo file out of it, of course, just like you. I’ll also do the the Atmos or the immersive mix and stereo at the same time. so that’s my goal. And and also in the book, I present a workflow in which you first create an immersive and then make an an mixing with a format agnostic way of working. And when it’s finished, then you decide which format you’re going to do. Of course, half of the book is mixing in Dolby Atmos. let’s be honest, that’s the most important thing. So that’s also the main thing of the book. But it’s just like it it’s it it’s when you talk about channel placement, for instance, it’s the same for Dolby Atmos or Eclipse, for instance. So it’s it’s it’s more general than than only this this this format. And

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: Yeah, one of the reasons is also that that well Dolby Atmos I really love and and I have a Dolby Atmos set up and I work in Dolby Atmos. but it it has got limitations, which is really a pity. And and and they refuse to change it, which is really a pity. And and there are better alternatives. so that’s why I always keep my eyes open on on new developments and and just yeah, we’ll see what a future will will bring, but I think that it’s better to be future proof. So my book is is is an encouragement for people to stop thinking only in stereo, no start thinking in immersive. And from the creation process, how you can place an instrument in in inside a room, how you work with space, how you work with delay in the creation of music. And then when you do the the the mixing, what what is the best way just to to to fill to fill this room? But I’m also discussing the difference between channel based, object-based, what is the the the the pros and the cons. can we is it important to have a lot of movement or not? things like that. and also there’s a chapter about mastering, where I do the comparison between stereo mastering and immersive. It’ll be Atmos master mastering. so this is considered to to Atmos, of course, because you’ve got Wavelap thirteen, which has a

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Gert: Atmos mastering program and also Fidel Audio Mastering Console. You’ve got two very good mastering programs for Atmos mastering. So do the comparison comparison between s stereo and and immersive. And then also the the last chapter is about the the the delivery formats, the D D plus jugs and the the AC fars and and other conversions which take place take place all over in in in in in the whole project process.

Matt: When you’re exploring a particular topic or writing a book, do you feel a sense of time pressure to get it done before, you know, is there a threat that you will lose interest in what you’re doing? Let’s say you’re 50% way through writing a book about immersive, you know, audio. Is there a potential, do you ever worry like, crap, I gotta get this done because I might lose interest and something else might catch my attention?

Gert: Mm-hmm. Well, I I have to give myself a deadline. In the beginning there’s no deadline, and I’m totally free, and that’s the most fun part of all, because then you’re just watching some videos and reading and and and exploring things because I I I I test everything myself in my studio. every plugin I I describe, I’ve tested myself. So those are the the the the fun things to do. but Then there’s this time that that you you have to to to finish it and and and to to to to to finalize everything. And for that I really need need a deadline. And in this case, it was in in in February there was a convention in in Helsinki for European convert conservatories, in which I did a a talk on immersive audio. So I thought that day I will present my book. And that was my personal deadline. And that’s something I need to to really finish it. And then the last month it’s like nonstop working just to to finish it. and I need to have this deadline because I want to do something else also afterwards. Then maybe there’s two months I do do don’t do anything at all anymore with immersive. I’m just doing other things, just to clear my mind and then it comes back. So it’s not I’m not doing everything at the same time. It’s just always

Matt: Right. Because you only have room and and time for so much. So I’m sure that, you know, the minute you discover there’s a new thing you want to explore, you’ve got to like shuffle out or move move aside one other activity.

Gert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there’s always one big investigation at the time. So there’s one big topic I want to explore at at one specific time. So when I’m very into when I’m working busy with mixing in in in in Dolby Atmos that I’m not doing mastering anymore, at that at the same time. So or or or a lose interest. So luckily I’ve got some some mastering gigs just to Keep on going because otherwise I just maybe I forget things after a while. so yeah.

Matt: I know you you you have to do the activity to keep it’s like exercising the muscle.

Gert: Yes, indeed. So yesterday I got a question from from an artist. he he will release three full albums in the next month. will you master it? So yes, of course. So and that’s that’s good just to have have this this this practice, because otherwise I yeah I’m I’m I’m yeah.

Matt: When it comes to the the business part of everything for you, now you’ve got your teaching gig. So that’s that’s your regular income. How do you price yourself for the other activities? How do you establish, like, what’s a fair price for me to charge for mastering, for mixing for other people? what process do you go through to to determine what your value is?

Gert: Well in the beginning it’s like start low and see how high you can go. but there’s also an ethical question in this way that for mastering, when a student asks me to do mastering, I will give a huge discount. because it’s not because it’s a student. I won’t do it for free, but it’s not my regular price. Normally for mastering I’m asking 50 euro for a trick, but for student it’s thirty five. Yeah, and that’s cheap for students. and I can live with it. because that’s good. It’s also it’s an ethical thing. I I can’t charge the the same amount of money. but there’s a lot of things I I you you just do for free. You’ve got a lot of people asking you for advice and I want to give advice, There’s some some commu communities in which I contribute just for free. I’m giving mixing feedback for on on the line communities for friends. I’m just doing that for free because I love doing it. and when I do a talk, then yeah, of course I that that’s that’s see how how high can you go. I say I’ve got my minimum. if I do a talk, so this is my minimum amount. And it’s always like like a typical economic economical game. You you ask much more in the hope that you get a little bit more than than than the basic basic price. but I but I see all those things as as an as an extra extras to buy gear. That’s really the thing. That’s that’s how I I I work. So I do mastering to to to to pay back my my investments.

Matt: On the on the Right.

Gert: the same with immersive. I’ve do visits in my brewery, which also get a little bit of money, which I buy plugins from, because I’m I’ve I’ve got a huge collection. So I I’m that that’s also yeah, I buy too much things and and and also selling and reselling, but I’m yeah, I’m I’m a control freak, but also a controller freak. so I want this is new, I want to try it out.

Matt: Th let me ask you about that.

Gert: And and that’s that’s with all those mastering gigs and and and other gigs that’s yeah for for so at the end I have a free hobby. That’s how I see it.

Matt: You have a hobby that right, that pays for itself, essentially. Let me ask you about the trying things out aspect because there’s things I see that I think I don’t really wanna own that, but I do want to try it. And sometimes I confuse my need for something with the desire to just test it out, just for experiment’s sake.

Gert: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Matt: Do you do you also have a a a desire to just try things?

Gert: Yeah, and that’s that’s all I’m not saying it’s it’s really a sick situation, but but I think there’s a lot of us music engineers have got this this problem. maybe also fear of missing out. so something new. I I I need to know, especially when you present yourself as a as an expert, you you have to know it. so you can’t say, I don’t know that. No, no, you have to know it. So for software I buy too much, really too much. I buy plugins, even it’s that sick. Sometimes I buy plugins and I know I will never use it. But there’s also for my collection, just to to know what it is. It’s that’s stronger than myself. it’s only 20 euros. Okay, I buy it. And and that’s not good. For hardware, it’s something different. well, we all know there is this economical system where you can buy gear at the big shop and then send it back after a month. That’s what I do sometimes. I just try it out. And if it’s no, this this this wasn’t a bad this was a bad mistake, then I send it back. So we have to admit, yeah, I do that. So that helps a little bit without losing that much money. But on on the other hand, I still buy a lot. So it’s it’s justified to to to to work that way.

Matt: You mentioned communities and I realize you participate with my good friend Chris Selim in his his communities. you mentioned you’re a Nuendo user and and he runs, you know, he does a lot of Cubase-centric stuff. do you get a lot of enjoyment from participating in those communities?

Gert: Yep. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And the fun thing is I I started by being a member myself a long time ago, just because I thought that maybe it’s interesting to get some mixing feedback, until I realized that, well, yeah, that’s I’m a teacher myself. And then it’s sometimes difficult to be a student again. and and I told Chris, I say, Well, I will help you, but I’m not just yeah. attending the sessions. And I said, well, join the team. And then I’m on the other side was together with Chess, Chess Roots, we we do the the monthly mixing revisions and and there’s a QA and and I really love doing it for two reasons. One is the same already explained. It also helps me structuring my thoughts because there are questions which are new and which I didn’t know before that makes me think, yeah maybe this is it this this is interesting. but also the second one is is like building a building a community so now i know chris now i know chess now i know some people that’s also interesting because those those are just lovely guys which i otherwise i would never know them and and and and and that’s it’s it’s it’s the same like playing in a band by doing this you’re part of a community so i’m i’m a and Einzelgänger, so I like to play myself on my own in my studio, but I also want to have contact with with people who think the same. And when you meet people with the same passion, the same interests, then that’s that really gives a very warm feeling. so after every session with with the the Chris Selim MCC, it’s called, I’m always smiling. It’s like yeah, and Then this has nothing to do with money or something. No, this is just because you want to share your your passion with with somebody else. That’s why I like to talk with you. That’s that’s the fun thing to do. That’s that’s and we need that. We we we’re we are human beings are very social beings, so we need to have social contacts. And for a modern music producer pr producer working in a in a in a studio, a lot of most of the times we work alone. then it’s important to have this this

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: these meetings. That’s why I love teaching. That’s that’s also my well, keeps me healthy. so

Matt: Yeah, it’s that’s interesting you say that because I I really think what I get out of doing these interviews is I just love to hear what people are doing, what their story is, how they’re you know, like I’m completely intrigued by your whole world and how you’ve structured it and some of the things you’ve learned about yourself along the way. I just find that endlessly fascinating to know. So I I I agree with you.

Gert: That’s also the reason why I listen to your podcast quite a lot, because just to hear these stories. That’s and I I know how how you’re working, so I really like this. It’s like it’s like meeting somebody, somebody which you don’t know. So, this is interesting. And sometimes I I hear podcasts w from people who who doing things which are totally different than my point of interest. But even then I found some things. this is nice, this is good to think about. do it do does it this way, and and that’s That’s that’s important. It’s like an an a window to to the world.

Matt: Let’s talk about beer. Tell me tell me how you got involved in making beer and and you have a proper brewery?

Gert: Yeah. Yeah, small one, but it’s it’s yeah. It’s well it’s it’s the same as as making music. It’s I’m I’m very bad in having hobbies. Let me explain. When I’m interested in something, something gets a passion, and a passion gets almost an obsession. then I’m so intrigued by something that I want to explore it, I want to know it. So music is not just enjoying music, no, that’s making myself and then presenting myself, pre-mixing me. And with beer, it’s the same. It’s like I’m I’m a I’m a a huge fan of of of the the strong Belgian beers. at my parents’ house there were always fifteen different kinds of beer, no lager beer, no industrialized beer, but the artisanal, real strong, heavy, pure beer. we we of for which Belgium is very famous for. we were really a very famous beer country.

Matt: yeah.

Gert: And then I just want to to start reading about how is beer made. And I thought, this is interesting. Maybe I have to try it myself. And then I bought a small kit to brew in the kitchen. And and my first brewing was was so nice to do and and and it tasted well. That’s that thought, this is great. I I want to do this more. And then we we live in the countryside and we’ve got this this like this this workshop place in an old part of the building where used to be horses long time ago before we lived here. and then I renovated one of the one of those spaces into a a full functioning small brewery. and and yeah the same stor story. I studied a lot of because I’m I’m a sociologist, that’s my my thing. I’m not a chemistry guy. I’ve never loved chemistry. But then I start reading books about how to make beer, making notes, studying, and and the same process as with mastering and immersive. And then I just try it myself and and and I can do every anything I want if I have a very strong intrinsic motivation. and if you ask me something which I don’t like, I’m very bad in it and won’t do it. So I’m very difficult with the things which like bookkeeping, for instance, doing promotion, I hate it. I hate the whole economical side of things. That’s not my world. but when I have very strong interest in like this making beer, then I just go into it. And the coincidence was that my grandfather, he was a brewer, and I’m the first person in the in the in the whole family, in the second generation, starting beer again. So he made beer one century ago. and and maybe that’s something unconsciously part of the whole story, because maybe that’s the reason why there were so many good beers at my parents’ place, because it was also part of that that family. and and then yeah, i it’s a nice story to to tell also that the I found some old bottles of my grandfather with his name on it, bottles which are more than a century old. and that was so so so so hard warmful to to to find this also for my father. and and and and this is yeah I I experiment with with with taste and the 10 years that I didn’t make or nine years that I didn’t make any music at all I was only doing my brewery Then was really professional brewery. I sold to all the restaurants and pubs in the neighborhood. at a certain time I had about more than than than 15,000 liters per year selling my beer. But the same thing, I’m very bad in promotion and economy. and the beer world is full of mafia, really. It’s it’s if if you know all those. those shops and and and the in-between persons who take all the money and and and and the the producers are really sometimes don’t have anything. So there was also during Corona I I decided no I don’t want to to waste too much energy in the bad vibes I got from the business part of the beer world. so I go f today I go to another brewery nearby, which is a bigger brewery. And they brew my recipe. So I changed my small brewery into a small labo where I can still experiment with new tastes and and make new recipes because that’s the creative thing about making beer, and the thing I really love doing is being creative. So I want to make recipes and that’s my i enjoyment. But when a recipe is finished and the brewery Brewing process itself, it’s always the same for every kind of beer. It’s always the same steps you have to do. The bottling of the beer, it’s always the same. So at the end, that’s that’s that’s boring for me. and and then it’s really work. unless it’s really paid that well, I can say, okay, I do it for the money. But even that wasn’t the case. because it’s such a small brewery. I couldn’t, I even couldn’t ask the production price from a beer because it’s so expensive.

Matt: Yeah.

Gert: To have a fully functioning official brewery with all the regulations there are, that it’s so expensive that I decided no, that’s it’s not worth doing it. So I still have my and I still do brewery visits. I’ve got one group a week maybe coming and visit me and do my talk. And we do a a tasting which is very nice doing it, and I can I can do my talk on beer, which I enjoy. And it’s still, yeah, something that’s also to to keep balance. maybe that sounds like a contradiction, but sometimes by doing different things at the same time, it it’s a form of to to relax because I’m not too pinpointing on one small thing, so it’s I’m spreading the attention and that’s easier to to to to to relative rel to to to make it more more in balance, that’s the word. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: More imbalance. what stresses you out?

Gert: Things I have to do which I don’t want to do. people who are not responding or not fast enough, in my opinion. people who are Yeah, too too much information. so for instance, the reason why I go to Ghent, which is again a forty kilometer drive from my home by bike, is because I get too stressed by taking a train and forced To follow conversations which I don’t want to follow.

Matt: because you’ll be on the train and you’ll hear other people talking in that and your mind

Gert: Yeah. Yeah. Especially on the phone and and and even with earbuds with with noise cancelling still coming through and and that’s too much for me. And then I’m so pissed when I when I enter my my school. And that’s yeah, I’m I’m I’m very sensitive to too much information and too much things happening around me. And and one of the really my bad sides is I’m I’m always thinking I’m am I am I doing the the right thing? And I’m always thinking maybe I this wasn’t good what I did. Maybe I said something which wasn’t okay. And during the night that keeps on going in my head. maybe that was wrong, I shouldn’t have done this. and yeah, that’s also part of my psyche is working, I think.

Matt: You know, I completely identify with what you’re saying about the the distractions of because I am super I’m hypersensitive to people like being on their phones and watching a YouTube video in public with the volume really loud, like like at an airport or wherever there’s enough distractions at an airport for most people, but add the cell phone or add the people talking at a movie theater, like I love that you take the the the time to bicycle to work to isolate yourself from all those distractions and to just focus on you and the road ahead.

Gert: Yeah. Yeah. That’s something you you you learn about through the years. because I I used to live in Ghent, which is a city, and I was live living in a in a city life with a lot of concerts and going to pubs and restaurants and a lot of social contacts and a lot of noise. but maybe there are some things which change when you get older and and some things are are more difficult. and I especially experienced this since my 50, 55. So the last couple of years. and it’s more or less like Corona that that time, because I was 50 during the lockdown. and then you just find a find a solution. So it’s always a contradiction. you’re you’re looking for s for some less distraction, but on the on the same time you also need social contact and and you you’re you’re looking for new people. So it’s yeah. Sometimes the balance is is is is is different, but yeah, time by time you you learn.

Matt: Now this part it is gonna escape some of you who are just listening. So if you if you’re on YouTube it’ll make more sense. But can you talk a little bit about your your setup there at home with the different video capability? Because you were telling me that you are set up to fully teach online. Is that is that correct?

Gert: Yeah. Yeah, that’s correct. because I want first I wanted to start my own on online academy. but then I realized I needed to have a YouTube channel and and promote myself to get a lot of subscriptions or something, which I don’t want to do. but I’m I’m still equipped, which is good also for teaching. sometimes when when there’s a a strike or something in the country, then I say, we do the lesson online. And the car of my system is is a roadcaster from road, the roadcaster video. You also got the roadcaster pro, which is the podcast thing with with only audio only. but this is audio and video, so you’ve got inputs from your screens from different cameras as much as you want, and almost. and You can also choose the the outputs. so I also can send my system audio through the same stream without any connection. I can show the screen of my of my main Mac. no problem. It’s just pressing a a button. Because for instance if I and you can have a lot of shortcuts, so I you can show my book, I can show my name underneath the screen. so here is if you’re on YouTube, this is my email address. You always can contact me if you want. this all the things this makes it very easy to do online teaching. even like I can have some sound effects in between, which is also nice.

Matt: That’s and and when did you start to realize that this was something that would augment your your online teaching or was this a part of the initial idea of putting together an online academy?

Gert: Well, it started viewing again during Corona. being a professor, all the lessons were online. And I just realized that these online lessons were so boring because just on Teams with small screens is not the same. so I first I wanted to have something by which the audio quality was better, but also that the video quality was better, just like a YouTube channel with with with 4K video and and a nice camera angles. I wanted to have this too for my online classes, even at at the university for for for for any lesson at all. and that’s why I thought maybe I’ve have to invest in this system. And if I do online teaching, then then I’m set. maybe I will restart the online academy one day, but we we’ll see. the book is first, and maybe the academy is afterwards. But I’m also open for yeah, work with other people. Also when I when I w do these online communities, this is this is easy. For instance, on the MCC if there’s a Chris Selim’s channel, if there’s a question about mastering, I just open my sc I just I don’t have to share my screen. I just show my my DAW. I can say, y this plugin. this is interesting. you’ve got much more possibilities and especially today there’s a lot of things happening online. So being equipped a little bit better is not that bad. It’s very fruitful.

Matt: I would agree. Yeah, because in this day and age, you know, there’s there’s so much that let me let me back up. In this day and age, it’s nice to be prepared because I think that the activities that we do, I mean, you’re y you have a lot of activities going on, and I don’t think everybody has as much going on as you do, but those that do participate in audio in any kind of video or interviews or teaching, the ability to share your screen at at in the most simple way and have a good mic and and talk effectively with people I think is super important. sometimes my wife at her corporate job, you know, I I see you know, maybe I see over her shoulder or something if she’s in a meeting and Like everybody’s just got horrible audio. Horrible audio and mediocre video. So

Gert: Yeah, and it of course it’s an investment and and not everybody is is preparing to do it. For instance, this roadcaster video it’s it’s about one thousand dollar. but yeah, if you use it a lot then and yeah. And and and of course I’m also self employed, so these are are expenses, so I I it’s in my bookkeeping. So

Matt: Which is not your favorite to do.

Gert: No, I have a bookkeeper.

Matt: Well, so your situation is a little bit different than than many of of the guests, but still my question about money that I typically ask is what is your philosophy about how to be I mean, you’re not just an audio professional, you’ve got so many other things going on, a teacher, audio professional, beer, you know, a a beer beer what would you say, a brewer? A brewer. how do you approach survival and and money?

Gert: Well that’s of course very important because it’s part of your survival strategy. you have to be sure that that that that you can live. And once again, maybe it’s difficult different from from from other people because I’m self-deployed as a side activity. It’s not my main job. And really if I don’t if I shouldn’t have a regular job like I have at university, my life would be totally different. This is really the car business for me. And maybe also an advice I can give to other people is like first find a job which is not that bad, but which give you a financial secure basics that you know I’ve got this amount of money every month, this I I need to pay, so I’m safe. I don’t have any financial troubles. And then you can see what else can you do on top of that. And that’s how I step into this life it’s like i I I’ve got some extra jobs and extra gigs for mastering and mixing or whatever. And okay, I’ve got new money to buy gear. And this way I keep this this this balance. But the the the basis is really to have this this this the same amount of money every month. So I know until I’m retired I will have my the same salary every month with which I can pay the house and and pay the bills and and pay my food and and yeah that’s a luxury but when you’re working in in a creative sector it’s it also give you so much freedom for instance if if you only are a mastering engineer just to to pay the bills at the end there’s so much things you have to to take into account and and buy new gear and do promotion and and so that That’s the disadvantage of being an fully self-employed. You have to do everything yourself. If you love doing it, then it’s fine. If you love doing promotion, I love doing bookkeeping, then it’s good. But in my case, I don’t like that. So I need really I need a job. but what a it’s I know it’s really a luxury, but when I do teaching, I don’t need to do any promotion, to be very cruel. If crude, crude, cruel. If I don’t have students, I even get money. So it’s the university who is attracting new students. I don’t need to do that. So every year there’s a new year and there are new students in front of me. That’s that’s wonderful. Because the system is doing the promotion, not myself. And it’s a platform in which I can share my my passion. So if I do a production class and I go home, it’s it’s like big smile, the biggest smile I can and I I always tell my students, just email me a anytime, also during holidays. There’s no problem for me. I answer your questions because I love sharing my my my ideas. So so then I’m not talking about money because I know the basic bills are paid. And that gives without that I don’t think I could live this life. I n really need this security that I know this is this is sorted out. If not, I I think my head would explode. Absolutely. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, makes total sense. well, I I must thank you for your time. I I know that you you are doing a lot of different things. And so to make time for me, I I know that you know, you had to you you had to stop doing something else to allow the bandwidth for me to come in and and intrude. So appreciated. links will be in the show notes audience for everything we’ve talked about. yeah.

Gert: Pleasures totally mine.

Matt: Great to great to meet you and I maybe someday I’ll be in Belgium and we’ll meet. I’ve last time I was in Belgium I was passing through on a train.

Gert: Yeah, next time you’ll have to stop and we do a beer tasting at my place. That would be absolutely lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Because beer tasting, it’s almost an immersive experience.

Matt: that’s what we have to do. Okay. I’m in. Great, great note to stop on. well thank you again and and you take care.

Gert: Yeah. Take care of you too and very happy to be in the show.

Matt: My pleasure to have you. Thank you.

Matt: There’ll be a countdown. It’ll yeah, it’s no big deal. Let’s see. Okay. All right. We’ll get started by me saying, Alex, welcome to the podcast.

Alex: Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate you you having me on.

Matt: Yeah, great to see you. and great to meet you. John Greenham, former WCA guest and and old friend of mine, has long touted your name as someone that I should talk to. And it’s taken me a while to get off my ass and and and contact you. But we made it happen and you’re here and I’m very excited.

Alex: I’m go I know you’re busy. I’m glad you I’m glad you found time. John, there’s a John, there’s another another check in the mail, John.

Matt: Well I’m glad you found time with Yeah. Yeah, John. We’ll make sure and spell your name

Alex: yeah, John John’s incredible. Yeah, I’ve kno I’ve known John for I mean, I was living in San we were both living in San Francisco in the early two thousand like two thousand, two thousand and one. And that’s when we first met.

Matt: I had no idea. ‘Cause I’ve been here since nineteen eighty eight. So we’ll we’ll get into that. But let’s talk about let’s talk about the state of the state. Let’s talk about who you are. What do you consider yourself? Where are you living? What what tell people what we need to know about you just right up front, the basics.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Mm, okay. Right. Well, I’m predominantly a a producer. I you know, I do some engineering and and mixing, but predominantly production is is my thing. And I’m out here in Joshua Tree. So I spent I spent many, many years in LA, San Francisco, moved to New York City for nine years and had a studio out there. But, you know, San Francisco and New York, like me if I wasn’t in the music industry that’s probably where I would be. San Francisco. But you but I don’t have to tell you that it’s it’s a little pricey, real estate is tricky and expensive and you know, that was I love living in New York, but you know, I had this tiny studio of the size of a cat box and it was five grand a month and it was you know, it was just ridiculous. And so, Then I moved back to LA and we were actually had a a house we had we had a rented house in LA with an amazing landlord, a good friend of mine, and and I was literally recording bands in the front room. And my wife was incredibly patient and wonderful about it, you know, but I after seven years of that she was like, something’s gonna need to change here. We cannot keep doing this. So I was like, okay, okay, okay. And LA is just completely unaffordable at this point too. I had a number of friends that had moved out to the desert and were sort of encouraging me, you know, you should come and check out the desert, it’s really beautiful. And you know, I felt like yeah, it’s too hot, there’s nothing out there, it’s you know but over time as we came to start visiting more and more, we were like, No, it is really special out here. It’s great and we could afford to buy property out here. Still not cheap, but you know, compared to New New York or LA or San Francisco, yes definitely affordable. So I decided to move out here and build a studio out here and I sort of do this it’s s it’s it’s sort of a package deal. you know, you come out to the desert, I’ve got accommodations for people to stay in here, so you sort of camp out and

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: And make your make your record.

Matt: Wow. That’s nice. I I really I want to come back. We’re gonna circle back to that because I really want to get into the depths of that. let’s talk about, let’s go back in time. Where did you grow up?

Alex: I grew up in the Midlands in the UK. I was born in Birmingham and then moved to Stoke-on-Trent. Sort of like out of the frying pan into the fire. I went to I went to college in Nottingham and that’s when I really started playing music because I had a band in Nottingham. We got signed to a UK label, but then the the UK label had

Matt: Ha ha ha

Alex: What do you call that? Like an upstream deal. So like, you know, if you if you start to sell enough records, then you’re automatically gonna be on Columbia Records. You know, classic kn early nineties thing. And so that’s what we did. So then we had a US label and we were touring all the time over here. and that’s when I met my American wife, at the ex wife now, but at the time.

Matt: Right, right.

Alex: you know, so I was spending a lot of time in this country and then one thing led to another and I just sort of ended up staying really.

Matt: In your upbringing, what was your exposure to music or technology?

Alex: Absolutely none. I mean, you know, when I was growing up in the early to mid eighties, I mean I was a huge music fan. I mean music absolutely saved my life when I was a kid. You know, so I was a huge music fan. But because of where I was growing up in a small town in the middle of the country, I mean it’s not like I grew up in London, I wish I had. But, you know, where I was there was no experience like that. There was Y there was no resources, there was nothing at all. looking back on it, I in a way I th it sort of makes me appreciate it because when you have nothing like that, you really have to work that much harder, you know, to to do something creative. And I think that did it definitely informed who I am or who I became, you know. But yeah, there wasn’t

Matt: Okay. Yeah.

Alex: there was no resources whatsoever. So it was like me and my mate Ben we would we would sort of jam on whatever instruments we could we could put together and, you know mostly it was like us trying to play Sisters of Mercy songs or or Killin’ Joke songs or something. you know, yeah.

Matt: Ha ha ha. So when you started out, was your first exposure was as a player? Okay. And when did you start to become, whether as a player or not, when did you start to become aware of or or start to raise questions about how do they make these records? How is this done? How is your awareness of production or or curiosity about it?

Alex: yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well so you know, a few years later when I was at college I had this band, that was the band that got signed. And just before we got signed, we went into a local studio. It was just a guy with literally a four track. So you got drums on track one, bass on track two, guitar on track three and vocals on track four. And that was it. You know, if you wanted to add a second guitar, well you you couldn’t, you just had to do it. But it was a really great experience because I loved the whole vibe of it. But I mean I must admit it’s it’s not his fault, but it it was a very, very small and rinky dink studio, so it wasn’t terribly impressive. But but I did really enjoy the experience of it. And even at that stage I sort of got the feeling, you know, most musicians will say, you know, I live for the road, I I want to play the gigs, the adoring fans and all I always felt like, I don’t really love that. I like, yeah, I like it, but that’s not like when we go into a studio and realise a song, that’s when I really come alive. It you know, that’s really special to me. So when we got signed to that label, they said, okay, see now you’ve got a bit more budget to work with, you need to get a producer. And we were like, why do we need a producer? We we know what I said. We’re a punk rock band and we We know what we’re supposed to sound like. And the label like, Yeah, but you know, like a really good producer can can help you see things in the way that you hadn’t seen before, or can be really objective in a way that you can’t possibly be. Okay, sure, we’ll try it. And I I was very resistant, actually. The the other two guys were not, but I was particularly resistant. Cause like a lot of artists, I felt like These songs are my baby, you know, I don’t I don’t need somebody messing with it. So it took and and so that producer was Colin Richardson, a British producer. I mean, of course he won me over because he’d worked with Sisters of Mercy and and a lot of punk records, GBH and Batfish Boys and all this stuff that I that I grew up with that I loved. So of course, yeah, I’m gonna trust this guy. He’s done something that I

Matt: Well, well

Alex: That I really respected. But working with Colin was a life-changing experience for me. For one, he took us into this incredible studio, which is this place, Sawmills, that we briefly talked about earlier. So, you know, I’m a twenty-year-old kid from Stoke-on-Trent, never seen anything, you know, never been anywhere or really done anything much. And we drive down to Cornwall, the furthest tip of England.

Matt: Mm.

Alex: And it’s basically like you drive to the tip of England and there’s no main road to this the studio’s on an island. So a power you you and there was no cell phones back in those days, right? So you had to go to the pug and ring the studio and say, We’re here, can you come and pick us up? And they’d send a power boat out across the lake. You’d load all your gear into his power boat, and by this time it was like the middle of the night, because it’d taken us twelve hours to drive down there. And and you go into this, it w literally is an old sawmill stone building. so it’s an incredible incredible studio. Muse did a lot of records there, Stone Roses, and there’s been a lot of really great records done there. And working both in that studio and working with Colin as a producer, you know, so this time we’re working on two inch twenty-four track. with a big Trident desk and big, big monitors and the whole thing. So that really just blew my mind. You know, that was I was just sort of we were halfway through the album and I was asking Colin already like, how can I do this? How can I do what you’re doing? I wanna do I wanna do this the rest of my life.

Matt: So the shift was starting to happen right then.

Alex: Absolutely, yeah. And that’s when I realised like I’ve still gotta do touring with this band ’cause that’s part of the commitment of being in a band. But honestly, I’d much rather just be in the studio, you know, than than touring. And so I knew I you know, the writing was already on the wall. I you know, I toured as much as I could handle really, but you know, the touring lifestyle is not really my personality. You know, I’m a I’m a bit of a homebody, I like tinkering with stuff and just working on music, you know, so it felt like, okay, the studio is really my play.

Matt: What was your primary instrument? Okay. That’s I think that’s fascinating that it took you’re you were hesitant in the beginning, yet you go through this process and it just your mind just opens up in such a huge, monumental way.

Alex: Guitar and vocals. You know, Colin Colin was incredible and Colin showed me what a producer can do and what a good producer can bring out of a band, in that he adapted, he he could tell that, you know, we were a punk rock band and we were coming from that background and we didn’t need a very strong, you know, dictatorship idea from a producer. It was more s you know, Colin approached it more like What are your favorite bands? What are your favorite records? Can we play some of those? Can we listen to, you know, what they did and incorporate some of that influence? And you know, so he would ask us, you know, what do you think about drums? Should they be very dry or should they have reverb on them? And I would play him this birthday party records or killin’ joke records, you know, that had this very aggressive gated reverb sort of thing on it. And he’d go, Okay, I got it. You know, now let’s see. But I don’t want to do that exact same thing. Let’s see if we can how can we make that work with what your sound is and create something new with it. So he was brilliant. Yeah. The the only the only thing is that at that time Colin had moved much more into being a metal producer. Which you know, and metal is like like I don’t do metal because

Matt: That’s very different.

Alex: In metal everything’s about making everything perfect, right? Because you don’t you don’t really have a song to rely on necessarily. It’s more about the technical side of things and and this, you know, precise playing. Which is of zero interest to me. You know, I have no interest in that whatsoever. It to me it’s more about the vibe and and you know, we were a sloppy punk rock band. So there was a little bit of of

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Alex: of batting heads on that of you know, against how tight Colin wanted everything to be and how loose we wanted everything to be. But I think we you know, we had a really good middle ground in the end.

Matt: So the what are the takeaways from Colin? Because that style of production, that very engaging, what are you let’s play some of these songs and these drum sounds like some some producers would not go that direction. They would you know they would just say, Okay, here’s what we’re doing.

Alex: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean there’s so many producers you would just come in and they would say, This is the way we’re gonna do it and I don’t wanna hear your opinions and you know, and I I I often have meetings with potential clients, they’ll come to the studio and we’ll chat and I’ll ask them, you know, what’s your experience in with past records and I’ll hear stuff like that. I’ll hear that they, you know, had an album made by somebody that didn’t listen to what a a word that they said and they just stamped their own sound on it which wasn’t even good. It’s one thing stamping your sound if it’s amazing, but if it’s not even good or if it doesn’t align with the artist’s vision, then what’s the point? I mean there you know, there there are some cases there’s maybe certain clients I have that come in that say, look, we’re just open to being molded. Like we we’ve written the songs, now you do your thing with them. That’s what we want. And that’s great too, but you know but only if somebody’s expressly gives you that permission.

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, so Colin was really, really good at that at trying to take our influences into into account and where where we were coming from. But you know, Colin he did also do a lot of things. I mean, he showed me so many things that I still use to this very day. So many little tricks and, you know, concepts. There’s also a lot of things that Colin did that I absolutely hated and that I to this day, you know, think, God, I’m never gonna do that. It’s just so ridiculous.

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: Colin he really had this whole concept of everything has to be isolated. To I mean to a ridiculous degree. you know, we all understand the the point of isolation to some level, but Colin took it to a very ridiculous degree. And then I know that that made mixing very difficult for him. Because you you have everything so incredibly isolated that it It’s very difficult to make it sound like a band.

Matt: Yeah. Absolutely. Where did you tell me about the post that record? Like after you’re after the end of that record, after the end of the touring for for that situation, like while you’re on tour, I assume you’re like, I gotta get to my next thing, which is what I want to do, which is production. where did you take this newfound love of the studio and production after this band?

Alex: Well, I was I was very, very lucky because you know, a a lot of people they have to go and work at an a a studio and clean toilets and be an apprentice and try to work their way up. The thing is, I would have done that if it was available, you know. I mean and if I’d been living in London, yes, I could have done that. But where I was living, I mean, there was only one recording studio there and they were already They were already filled up. It was it just wasn’t really an option. And so, you know, at that same time I come to the US and was spending a lot of time here. And that band that I was in was fairly well known at the time. And so, you know, it it was by touring with other people and and being around other bands. They would say, you you know a lot about all the studio stuff, right? Can could you help us with our album? And so I was very lucky that I fell into that thing. And and I actually it we it was a little bit interesting because I started doing that and I quickly realized I don’t know enough yet to do this and to and to charge people money and be a part of it. So I would have to have a conversation with people like. I’ll produce your album, I’ll work on your album, but either you don’t pay me because I can’t guarantee it’s going to be any good, or maybe you should find somebody else that is more experienced. And so with that in mind, I realized okay, I need to step back a little bit and I need to really learn more before getting too deep into this situation. So

Matt: You never had experience the T boy or the tape op position. It’s

Alex: No, it just I would have loved to. I would have absolutely done it. It just wasn’t available, I mean, largely because of my location and then spending so much time, you know, doing the band i and touring I wasn’t really available to be able to be in one place for long enough. So I finally I finally settled over here in first in Arizona. and just basically started working at local studios there. And then and then I got divorced and I moved to L actually I I tried to move to San Francisco but ended up in LA. yeah, well that’s the thing about LA. It’s like I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to get away from it or trying not to go there and to go to other places that I actually like better.

Matt: Just fell a little short.

Alex: But the thing is I’ve come to realise that LA is actually a wonderful place and especially if you’re doing music and you know, I have so many friends in LA and it’s it’s always treated me really, really, really well. So I sort of feel a bit bad, you know, I always talk shit about LA and you know, eventually so many people have a love hate relationship with it. I’m not alone in that. But I do feel like that it’s really helped me so much.

Matt: You know, coming from small towns in the UK and then coming to places like Los Angeles, I’m I’m curious about your initial impressions of America and and these big cities, because not only is it I mean, you could have moved to the big city of London, but here you are in a big city in America. So what were those early days like in terms of cultural shift or you know, trying to get acclimated to a new spot? Like that.

Alex: Right. I mean, yeah, it’s there was the the cultural shift of the coming immediately out to the west coast of seeing, you know, the car culture. So when I was living in England, it was always living in a city with a city centre and you could and you would live in the suburbs. So you could either walk into the city centre or get a bus or a train. It was dead easy and everything was all in one place. And so of course when I came out to LA and I said, Where’s the city centre? And people would say, Well, there ain’t one. There’s it’s like forty different cities all sort of jammed together over a fifty square mile radius. and you need a car. You’re not going anywhere without a car. So it was very difficult and for a long time I sort of struggled with that. Why isn’t there a central area? It doesn’t make sense to me, you know. Until of course I finally realized you can fight LA all you want, but I don’t think it’s gonna change just for you. So you be better get used to it. But I I immediately in LA found people incredibly friendly and open and frankly totally different from the UK. You know, the the UK Certainly at that time, early nineties, it’s just not a very welcoming place it’s not a very open place. You know, it’s difficult. People are not particularly friendly, especially to strangers. There’s a cultural barrier there, you know. And coming to LA, people were immediately open and and interested, and especially interested in people coming from other cultures. So I was like, wow, you’re you’re actually interested that I’m from somewhere else. That’s fantastic. And so I immediately, you know, I would just basically go to gigs in LA, go to gigs in Hollywood and and go and see a lot of bands. And if I saw a band I liked, I would go and talk to them and, you know, say, Well, you know, what are your plans? I I know a bit about recording, I know a few studios around here, I could help out.

Matt: Hmm.

Alex: And you know, so I got a lot of experience that way.

Matt: Were you intimidated at all by the culture at that time?

Alex: No. No, not intimidated, no. I I found it exciting, I think, you know, being in a being in a new country, being in a new town. Like I said, made so much easier because people were so open and friendly. I mean if I’d moved to New York City immediately, that might have been a bit more difficult. You know, I think that there’s specifically being in California is you know, people are very friendly and open. And you know, you could argue it’s probably ’cause they wanted something from you. And maybe that’s the case. But it’s certainly it’s certainly made my life a bit easier. You know, I mean I don’t know. I mean LA it is filled with music industry sleaze bags. Absolutely. And I’ve met you know more than my fair share of But I’ve also met hundreds and hundreds of people who are genuine music lovers, creative, normal, good people. And so I found that very inspiring. So so no, I didn’t find it intimidating. It’s just more inspiring really. And it you know, and I and I sort of felt like I kept sort of feeling like, well maybe I should go back to England ’cause I do still have my family there. And but at the same time it I felt like things are going pretty well here. It it really wouldn’t make sense to do that at the moment. And And now it’s thirty two years later.

Matt: And and we could dedicate a whole podcast to this, but I just looking at the two different cultures, you know, it makes me wonder with England in particular, like, you know, the difference there is is that, well, you know, in World War Two, Los Angeles wasn’t bombed, right? And and the UK was. And I wonder if the effects of World War Two had long lasting impact on the culture of England and that more buttoned up, you know, little more cautious approach to things versus, you know, I’m isolating Los Angeles, but America in general do doesn’t have that same history. So I don’t know. It’s definitely getting me to think about, you know, the history and the cultures of of the UK and and America.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think I think you’re right, you know, World War Two does have a a lot to do with it and but it’s also it’s also just a part of British culture. It’s probably been like that for thousands of years, you know. I mean I just you know, when I was growing up there, that’s I just thought that’s how the whole world was. You’re cold to each other and there’s a lot of fighting, you know. I just thought that’s wow, the world sucks. It’s fucking awful, you know. And then I started with the band we started travelling, we would go to France and Holland and Spain and be like, Wait, people are open and friendly and not gonna claim they’re perfect societies, but they were definitely much more open and less violent and, you know, much more inviting than the UK.

Matt: And, you know, I’ve I’ve said it before on this show to others, you can’t beat Los Angeles weather. I mean to especially you come from the UK and you get that sunshine and go to the beach and

Alex: It’s well, it’ll it’ll make you laugh, but that’s the only thing I didn’t like about it. I Well, I don’t you know, I I prefer the cooler climates, right? So that’s when I first went to San Francisco I was like, This is it. This is this is my jam. So I I prefer San Francisco. I mean i winter in LA is wonderful. It’s great, you know, everyone else

Matt: Little too s a little too sunny. Yeah.

Alex: is complaining, it’s fucking raining, it sucks, it’s cold, you know, I’m like, this is perfect. It’s seventy degrees. It’s great. You know. I’m like the one light whiny Brit that’s that’s like winter in LA is awesome. but the you know, yeah, the rest of the year it’s a bit it’s a bit warm for me.

Matt: Can you talk a little bit about your your trajectory in America and and the progression of growth with the records that you made and and how you made these leaps to, you know, in g you know growing your career?

Alex: Yeah. Well, so I started off in in LA as you know, and then at some point I was like, I need to go to San Francisco. That was always the plan and so let’s just do it, you know. And so I moved up to San Francisco and and didn’t really know anybody there at all. But it worked out great and you know, I’ve been very lucky in this country I always seem to like fall in with a good crowd of people. So I I feel very, very fortunate. And I sort of fell in with the the studio Tiny Telephone and John Vanderslice. So John and I connected on a really deep level and I loved his work and and John knew that I was really into analogue tape and the the whole old school vibe and and that was his jam as well at that time. This was around two thousand, two thousand and one. And so he was like, You know how to work a tape machine, you know how to do all this stuff? You should work here. So, you know, at at the time I I sort of felt like, you know, okay, I’m I’m a producer, right? And that means I’m sort of putting my taste and my ideas onto this project. And John, what you’re asking of me is that I just become a house engineer and I basically would just press record and not have any of my ideas, like the opposite of the producer, right? But I thought about it and I thought it could be really, really good because because I didn’t start off working in a studio, for example, I had no idea how to mic a trumpet or what mic to use or where you where would you I knew about rock guitars and drums, yeah, but not I didn’t know how to mic strings or trumpet or And so working at Tiny Telephone, you know, you’d have all these different bands that would come in, every from indie rock to these funk bands to mariachi bands that were local bands that would come in. And so I’d be like, Okay, now’s your time to learn how to micro trumpet. And I’m gonna and I remember like micing it and the guy saying, That’s not how you micro trumpet, man. Put it over here and you should use a ribbon mic. You should try that and I like, right, okay. Yeah, let me try that.

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: And you know, so slowly I learned a lot of the engineering side. And it also because I worked at the studio, it gave me a lot more time to experiment. You know, when I’m producing bands, I’m in an expensive Hollywood studio, it’s fifteen hundred a day, and there really isn’t much time to experiment with anything. But working at Tiny Telephone, I kinda felt like, you know, people would do a few takes and then leave early and I’d like, Great, I’m gonna try messing around with this mix and see what you know, let’s see what this compressor does or let’s see what this does. So it was really great experience for me. And I felt like after a few years of that, I was then able to go back into producing on a much deeper level and and more more connected on a technical side certainly. and then after that I d I did eventually move back to LA and That’s around the time, probably 2004, when I and I’m sure everybody else started to notice: whoa, these budgets are just suddenly going way down. Like way down. And so I found myself, you know, okay, if if we’ve only got 15 or 20k to make an album now.

Matt: Okay.

Alex: And all these studios in Hollywood are fifteen hundred a day and a reel of tape is three hundred dollars and we’re gonna need ten reels of tape or twenty reels of tape. And so I found, you know, we were really rushing through records like it sounds pretty good, not perfect, but you know, we’re running out of time, we just gotta go, we gotta and you know, some of the most well known records that I made were done that way, like the At the Drive-In record, which was done very, very, very quickly. And I sort of regret that, you know, because I sort of felt like there wasn’t really time to mix, you know, it was sort of like you put the faders up and be like, Well that’s that’s what we got. That’s all we have time for. There isn’t any more money or time. And I I you know, I do regret that a little bit. And so I started to think, I probably really need to get a room. You know, and at that time Pro Tools was coming in.

Matt: Okay. Mm-hmm.

Alex: it sort of felt like, well, maybe this is an affordable way to have a smaller room at least to take up some of that that budget, you know. So I would maybe I would go to Grandmaster or I would go to Sound Factory or I’ll go to Paramount, cut the drums in a nice big room, and then all the guitars and vocals, like, well we’re only using one mic, right? So let’s just go to my place and we can do all that stuff there. And so there became, you know, a a j shift for everybody, the whole paradigm, right, of of more the the home studio sort of thing. I it wasn’t something I particularly wanted to do. I didn’t it wasn’t my You know, because then you’re you’re also running the business side of it. There’s equipment that breaks all the time that has to be fixed and you know, and you have to deal with with clients in a different way than when you’re simply a producer. You’ve got to watch out if somebody eats a burrito and leaves it open, you know, in in California we have the the ant problem. Y you know, so

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: It’s all that sort of stuff that I didn’t really want to be dealing with, but is ultimately is the only way to do it. So then I had a studio in LA, I moved to New York City and had a another studio out there. And and that that was really good, but yeah, it was ultimately as as budgets continue to come down, it just felt like why am I in the most expensive city in the world trying to run a a recording studio in dis you know severely damaged business.

Matt: What what were your observations between differences between Los Angeles and New York? And and because you’d you’d had experience in both cities and obviously, you know, the budget is is continually going down, but other than that, like what are the noticeable differences to you at that point?

Alex: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean New Yorkers in general, or maybe it’s East Coast, is it’s a bit more of a direct thing and it’s you know, it’s quite a cliche. I’m not sure if it’s quite the same anymore. Yeah, I’m I’m sure it certainly used to be very much that way, you know, whereas California people were very relaxed and and open and easygoing but but very fake, right? That’s the cliche. And in New York it’s very aggressive and in in your face and very in intense, but honest, brutally honest, you know, you what you see is what you get. And I felt like I wanted to experience that. You know, it’s maybe a bit closer to British culture.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alex: and it is. But I you know, but I also experienced that New York is also totally filled with fake music industry people and and passive aggressive weirdo fake people who are just nice to you because they they want something from you, you know. New York in particular, I know there’s a lot of it in LA, but New York in particular there’s a hell of a lot of

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: rich kids who have fantastic studios that they have no idea what they’re doing with the with those studios. They they bought their way into the studio industry. So I experienced a lot of that. But you know, generally I I don’t think it was drastically different, you know, I that I met a lot of really, really great people in New York as well. I think it’s because it’s harder to live in New York and everything is more intense, there is a little bit of that element that comes across in people’s attitude and and in the music too. You know, but there is there is also a great feel of, you know, whatever it is like we can do this, you know. Like you you always see in New York, you know, someone’s delivering a couch, right? And they’re like there’s a fifth floor walk up with no no elevator, right? In LA they’d just be like, Fuck it, forget it. I’m going home, not gonna do this, you know. Or I’m I’m I need to go home and smoke a smoke a joint and think about it, you know. In New York they’re like, Fuck it, we’re gonna do this. We’re gonna do this right now, got some rope, we’re gonna do this, you know. So there’s that kind of attitude that

Matt: Right.

Alex: The I respected that, you know.

Matt: From a survival perspective between those two cities and those and that time period in general, the your time spent in LA, your time spent in New York, your survival and and with the budgets going down, at any point did you think, okay, well, I better go get like a day day job here, or I better augment my income because it’s just getting really thin.

Alex: Yes, I’m sure everybody everybody in the music industry has. you know, and when you’re a when you’re a freelance producer, for everybody it’s it’s very up and down, you know. Sometimes I go months without seeing my wife or talking to anybody else ’cause I’m so busy. Back to back sessions. And then all of a sudden it stops. And I have six weeks with nothing to do. And you know, that’s you you you start to get a little bit nervous about it. What’s what’s going on? You know, I have no income, I have nothing coming in. For me, it’s always been something always comes up and then suddenly I’m slammed again for six months and it’s it’s always up and down. But when you have those down periods, yeah, that’s definitely concerning. And as you see budgets generally coming down and down, you start to think, well, is this really viable? long term. But the thing with me is there there’s two things with me. A, I’m too old to do anything else. I don’t have any exper you know, can you imagine my my C V is gonna say, you know, miserable Brit with 30 years of experience in music can barely use a computer. It it’s like I it’s I’d be you know, I’d be minimum wage at Home Depot. And not that there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s where I would be at my age that would be a bit difficult. And yeah, but the other part of it is there isn’t anything else I want to do or really am capable of doing. So so you have to make it work. And, you know, whether that means you just gotta get out there and put yourself out there a bit more and and hustle a bit more or or at least use your time creatively, you know. So anytime I’ve had a down period like that, I usually put myself more into the creative side, get to work with musical projects with other people and and try to stay busy with it.

Matt: Do you think that your time at Tiny Telephone, did that help solidify your confidence about your engineering to complement your production skills?

Alex: Absolutely it did, yes. yeah. Because before that I was I was a producer in the in what is sometimes a little bit of a pejorative term, you know, it’s like the guy that sits at the back of the room and says, it sounds great, turn the snare up. My you know, I was a lot more involved than that, but I didn’t really understand a lot of the engineering. I like I I was like I you know, I was I was engineering. But there was I was bluffing my way through a lot of it. And that, you know, it doesn’t instill you with the confidence you need when you know you’re bluffing through some of it. A lot of the stuff I would do would be h happy accidents or you know, I would like, Wow, that sounds really good, but I actually have no idea how I did it, you know. Or I just kinda chanced upon something. To be fair, that does still happen even now and that that’s great. But yeah, working at Tiny Telephone really allowed me that that freedom to b to big to get deeper into the engineering side of it. And now and you know, and you develop a lot of methods that work really well for you, right? Not that I always rely on them, but they are there if I need them. And so oftentimes if I’m producing, I’m also engineering and it’s just sort of autopilot. You know, I’m I’m doing the engineering stuff and it’s just second nature. I don’t think about it too much. The The only issue occurs is when something technically goes wrong, right? And then you have to switch from producer, which is much more creative, vibe driven, to being very technical and like methodically testing patch cables or whatever it is. You know, that that’s it’s two different things. So you know, on some of the when when it’s When it’s possible, when it’s doable, I hire an engineer on the sessions to take up some of that engineering. I still do a lot of it, but you know, I would I wouldn’t be comfortable, I don’t think being a hundred percent hands off because it’s not who I am. To me the the the sound and the electronics and the vibe and the emotion, they’re all linked. together. So it it’s it wouldn’t make sense for me to completely detach. In the same way that it wouldn’t make sense for me to b only engineer. I’m la and I’m way too opinionated and I have way too much experience to simply engineer and not have an a an opinion that I could offer to people.

Matt: Yeah, because I’m sure you you like many of us hear like, okay, we’ve got a great sound, but this part you’re playing, you know, or for me, like I’m I’m s I get super nitpicky with drummers and I’m like, let’s switch the ride symbol. The snare drums tune too high, it’s clashing with that. We and it’s just that that sonic puzzle making that we do.

Alex: Yeah, yeah, totally.

Matt: But it’s interesting because had the like the budget started to go down. So like that forced a lot of people’s hand, a lot of producers’ hands into having to engineer because if you didn’t, you’d eat up your budget hiring the engineer. So you kind of have to take on both tasks. I wonder if your trajectory would have been different if budgets had stayed solid and you could have just said, I’m gonna produce.

Alex: Absolutely, yeah.

Matt: I’m gonna hire an engineer and stay and stay on this side of it, or if you naturally would have gone and and absorbed that knowledge anyway, because

Alex: No, I think I think I definitely would ’cause like I said before, it’s to me it’s all it’s all linked. It’s part of this the same thing. This the sonics and the vibe and the emotion. It’s all linked. And I and I find it hard to detach that. There I do do it sometimes, you know. Sometimes I really step back and let somebody else do it and and kind of oversee it a little bit. But I have to really force myself to stay away from the desk and to, you know, shut up about all the technical stuff. It it really depends on the project I think, you know.

Matt: Mm. You know, you mentioned a divorce earlier, and if I may ask, was that partly precipitated by you being gone a lot?

Alex: no, nothing to do with that. I we we were just we were just way too young and a bad fit, you know.

Matt: okay, okay. Yeah, okay. So but I’m sure you would stress the importance of finding the right partner in in your romantic life b because of the nature of being away and, you know, doing the job.

Alex: Absolutely. It’s it’s always been a problem in every relationship I’ve ever had. And you know, until I met my now wife, who’s incredible and, you know, was the first person that, you know, just said, I understand you do what you do, I really respect it. Of course I’m gonna miss you when you’re gone, but there’s no way I’m gonna tell you not to go or you know I’ll be here. And you know, I’ve I’ve ha I’ve had f I have a lot of friends that are touring musicians, you know, and I know a lot of times we’ll have the discussion where their partner is very angry at them about the amount of time that they’re gone. you know, it’s it is very difficult. But it at the end of the day it comes down to that it’s that simple thing. If you love someone, set them free. You know, you’d like that’s what I would my friends that are going through that, I would say I would say to them like whatever no matter how angry you are, and I know you’re upset and you feel lonely because they’re away so often, but don’t hold it against them and don’t because all you do is make it worse. If you show them love and you show them respect and and let them do their thing, you’re probably gonna find that they will actually want to be away less. And I’ve seen that happen many, many times with couples of mine that are friends, where it’s like if you just let that go a little bit, you suddenly find that wow, that person doesn’t seem to be going away quite as often. They want to spend more time with me. Right, because you gave them that freedom where you know it’s a classic thing when you’re telling someone, I don’t want you going on tour anymore. This sucks. No one wants to be around that. And so

Matt: No.

Alex: subconsciously that that person might end up taking more tours than before. yeah, it has been very difficult. I mean, yeah, but my current wife is is just incredible and it’s never been an never been an issue. And because it’s never been an issue, that’s exactly how it worked with me. Where I was like, she’s so great that I don’t want to s spend time away from her so much. I don’t wanna keep going out to New York or going to Canada or go into this what if I had my own place here where I was very close to home and then I’m not gonna be gone for weeks or months at a time. We’re still gonna be closer together. So that was the you know, that was the idea with this place where I have this setup now. I you know, I have a I have a lot of clients from the UK and from Australia and basically I I I set it up so that You can get off the plane, I’ll pick you up at Palm Springs Airport. You can walk in here and it’s everything you need. All the guitars, pedals, drums, everything’s set up. Drum you don’t even need to bring drumsticks, cymbals, anything. So that takes away a little bit of that need where, like, okay, I don’t need to go to Toronto for six weeks anymore. They could come here. And actually really enjoy it because ‘Cause it’ll be warm.

Matt: Yeah. Do you do you miss that travel and exploration of a new studio though?

Alex: No, I don’t. I you know, like a few years ago I would have said yes, absolutely I used to love that travel and going to new places and and you know but you reach a certain age where that is maybe not quite as appealing anymore, you know. I mean if I was lucky I got to stay in some nice hotels, right? Like I when I do the City and Colour records, we would go out to Nashville and we’d be staying in the W Nashville.

Matt: Ha ha. Mm.

Alex: Very nice. Yeah, that’s great. You’re still away from home, but yeah, it’s nice. But not everybody has that sort of budget and oftentimes it might be sleeping in some bo sleeping on someone’s couch. Yeah, I’m pe people always did their best for me and I really appreciate that. But at the same time, you know, you get into your forties and now in my fifties it’s like I can’t be sleeping on people’s couches. I just can’t. But

Matt: We’re too old for that.

Alex: I really really love this band and I think we can make an amazing record. So how can I make this work? Well, so the only way I can make it work is have them come here. And and you know, but but once you have a place and you have it set up and you have all your favorite stuff, you know, that is appealing to me. Like they it’s kinda like this workshop that’s right there, this magic workshop that’s right there. You know, yeah, I the I do miss going to certain rooms sometimes, but but not enough to worry too much about it. I’m too busy doing stuff here to worry about it.

Matt: Yeah. Have you and the wife ever considered packing up and moving back to the UK?

Alex: after the election last year? Yes.

Matt: Ha ha ha.

Alex: yeah.

Matt: Does is it I mean, is that like legit? D I mean, is it would you consider like moving to back you know, bat maybe maybe to Cornwall, right? Or you know, maybe maybe to another town that where you could

Alex: It’s it’s not I mean, it’s not expressly because of that. I mean it’s like I love this country so much. I am a US citizen, so I am an American as well as being still British. I’m a dual citizen. And I love this country, it’s been so great to me. But I wasn’t born here and it’s not necessarily my culture, although I have adopted it and love it. So I my point is I guess

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Alex: No matter what, there’s always going to be a thing of I’m from somewhere else and maybe I should go back there. No and it’s not to do with n not being happy here. It’s just a sort of thing of, you know, like, well that’s maybe my maybe my home is back over there. but I mean, you know, I still have family over there and my mom is elderly and I miss her very much. And so there, you know, there has been this thought of

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: Maybe that’s something I should think about and then and then I I’m you know definitely with the election last year that pushed me a little bit further in that direction. You know, but there’s two things. Well I mean, one, I’m very well set up over here and it’s not quite as easy as just packing a few things in a suitcase and getting on a plane.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Alex: I mean I have a mortgage and a huge amount of debt. My wife has a job and I have my clients here and it it would be it would be a lengthy and difficult process. The second thing is that

Matt: Yeah. Do you

Alex: The political situation in the UK is just as bad and is getting really terrible and is going the same way. So I feel like what would be the point of that? I’m just gonna go into the same thing, except with worse weather. and lastly, the thing is I’ve spent a lot of my life running from things. And I sort of feel like

Matt: Yeah. What do they say out of the frying pan into the fryer?

Alex: with this political climate. I just don’t know that the although it’s definitely very appealing to just get away from it and and run away from it because I can, but I don’t know if running away from it is the answer.

Matt: Yeah, stick it out. St stay here. Let’s talk about well actually before I ask you that, y do you have kids?

Alex: We do not have kids. We we partly because of my lifestyle

Matt: Yep.

Alex: We really waited way too long and found out too late that really we left it too late. And we we really tried and we did we did IVF, I don’t know if y you know what that is and all that stuff, but

Matt: Mm-hmm. yeah, yeah. Yeah, I’m I’m aware of it. But

Alex: Right. We basically le we basically left it too late and we are too old to be to be doing it successfully. So we we had to we had to stop. It’s very it’s very unfortunate, you know, ’cause I didn I’d never it never in my life I hadn’t met anybody that I wanted to have kids with. There’d just be no way. It wasn’t until I met my current wife that

Matt: Right.

Alex: maybe with her that would be different. But it was already really too late by that time.

Matt: Okay. Well let’s let’s I don’t I don’t mean to cut you off about that, but I but I do want to talk about n this space now. can you talk a little bit about the thought process of moving to Joshua Tree and purposely setting up a residential studio, really?

Alex: Yeah, it’s one. Right. Well, so, you know, a big part of it was as we as we discussed that that thing of me constantly being gone. I mean, there was in the last twenty years there’s there’s been times on on your when you do your tax return there’s a deduction that you can use, the the amount of days that you’re out of town. And even if someone else is paying for that trip, you can still claim that as a deduction. It’s just set I don’t know how much it is, maybe it’s a hundred dollars or whatever. ‘Cause it’s just an automatic thing. And so when I would do my taxes every year, my accountant would say, How many days are you out of town? And I’ll calculate it and I’d be like, my God, I was out of town seven months last year. And it’s just, you know, a ridiculous amount of time. So I kind of felt like I wanna spend more time at home, I wanna spend more time with my wife and my cats and you know, and be a a little bit traveling a little bit less. So that was the idea with having a a studio of my own that was really equipped well enough for anyone to be able to come out here and work. And secondly, it was also a little bit of a throwback to my days in the the early 90s of the residential studios, like Sawmills, because for me that was such a life-changing experience. You know, to the young kid in a punk rock band who I would, you know, never been to any place like this, and you go out to this beautiful scenery. I remember the you’d be in the control room, there’s a Trident desk, and you’d be looking

Matt: Loston. Mm. Lost ya. You wanna jump back in? I’ll be here hanging out, waiting for you to come back in. Mm-hmm.

Alex: Matt, I’m really sorry. my internet went out again, so I had to hotspot on my phone. Hopefully hopefully this will stay good. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that.

Matt: All right. no worries. No, yeah. It It froze on on me and I was like, shit, is that me or is that him? And then when you disappeared, I was like, okay, okay. So we’re good. a hundred percent. Yeah, we’re still recording. So I will completely you won’t even be able to tell. So we we the question was to talk about, you know, the creation of this space and the decision to move to Joshua Tree and create a residential studio and you still

Alex: Will you be able to to join it back together? Okay. Okay, great. But so I was you know, I was I was talking about the that studio Sawmills in the UK, which is just this fantastic, beautiful residential studio. And as you were recording in Sawmills there was windows everywhere, which you know, I’d always worked at studios in London or Birmingham or Nottingham. They’re always in a like dingy basement, you know. And so being at Sawmills

Matt: You start to go into it. Right.

Alex: The control room has a window that looks out onto a lake as far as the eye can see, forest and lake. I mean, it’s just incredible. You’d be rocking out, playing your parts, and be in this amazing, peaceful environment. And you know, when I was in New York, there was there was the opposite thing. It’s the whole point of this my studio in New York was you come to the studio, then you go out and drinking until 5 a.m. You know, that’s the New York. lifestyle and it’s very cosmopolitan, metropolitan. But so come you know, at a certain age I realized I want to do something different and and I always remembered what a incredible experience that was at Sawmills. And so I thought what if I could offer people something like this where you could come out to the studio, you can stay here, stay here for a week or two weeks or whatever. It’s peace and quiet, there’s beautiful desert scenery, natural light. And and so that was the the concept really was you know, most residential studios these days are gonna be impossible, right? But I was like, what if there’s a way that I can make it work and I I can make it affordable for people? So instead of staying in some fancy hotel, you’re staying in a in a trailer. But it’s a really nice trail, it’s a vintage trailer and it’s been refurbished and it’s got a lot of character. And it’s got a it’s got Netflix and air conditioning and it’s very, very nice. So it’s mu it’s sort of like a more glumping experience. You know, I don’t I don’t offer catering, it’s definitely a little bit lower budget type vibe, but that’s the whole point. You know, the the whole point is that I need to make it affordable to clients in today’s music industry.

Matt: Yeah. And talk to me about the studio itself. Like what you you mentioned bands showing up without even needing to bring guitars or drums or even sticks for that matter. So talk about the planning of what you put into the space.

Alex: Well, yeah, I mean I put a lot of work into the the space itself in terms of because we built the building from scratch. So it was actually great that I could design I want very high ceilings, which which the contractor said, no problem, that’s dead easy and then it ended up that it cost me another thirty five thousand dollars. And I was like, I should have just stuck with the low ceilings, no one would have cared. But I mean to me If you’re gonna do it, you’ve gotta just you gotta do it right, you know? And so, you know, I didn’t wanna have a place that was like, Well, it’s not very good, but it’s it’s affordable. I wanted to have a place that it’s great and it’s affordable. So we’ve got high ceilings, natural light, all that stuff. And then, you know, I tried to set everything up in t I like to have lots of equipment around so there’s always stuff to to play on and and

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Alex: Always stuff for people to try. I’m you know, I remember when I used to visit studios in New York or even San Francisco, and there’d be these fancy studios that were, you know, this incredible you could tell that they’d spent thirty grand just on the lighting, you know, and they got this fantastic big black leather couch and all this, you know. And I’d be looking at it and I’d be going, Well, this was designed by an engineer, not by a musician. When I worked at Tiny Telephone, John had this old, old couch that was falling apart that he got from a thrift store at Tiny Telephone. And it was falling apart, it was an old 70s couch. But anyone who sat on that couch, you’d immediately be like, I don’t want to get up. It’s just so comfortable. I just want to stay here all day. And be like, okay, stay here all day. I’ll bring the bass guitar over to you. You can play right there. Again, working with John at Tiny made me realize, you know You wanna design everything from a musician standpoint. You wanna have a funky old piano that has a lot of character. You wanna have a drum set always set up so that anyone can just immediately jump on it, even if they’re not gonna record. They wanna jump on it and try something out. You know, you don’t want to be like, yeah, okay, let me let me set up this eight piece drum set, you know, just give me an hour. You you want everything set up and ready to go, everything plugged in and everything comfortable. good coffee, you know, that’s more important than the any of the fancy lighting or the couch. And I would also say it’s more important than the equipment that’s in the rack. And oops and one thing I will say that was very interesting is that I don’t have a huge rack full of fancy stuff. I don’t have big banks of ten seventy three’s or APIs or you know, I have a lot of really great stuff, but a lot of it is very basic and does the job really, really great. Because I chose to put my money more into buying instruments and equipment and having a comfortable space that people could vibe on.

Matt: I I think that that is a a a fantastic way to do a space. And I always tell myself if I were ever to lose my mind and build another studio or b or get involved in a in a studio on that I would always set it up to where

Alex: Yeah.

Matt: there would be that that just show up. It’s already, we’re ready to go. You wanna play that keyboard? Play it. It’s on. It’s you can hear it and we can I could just engage the track and we can go.

Alex: Right, exactly. That’s so much more appealing. That’s the all the stuff I learned from John Vandersleis. You know, he would tell me you can have all the fancy compressors and ribbon mics you want. No one cares. musicians, they don’t care. If your coffee’s shit, they won’t come back. So get get good coffee, get a comfortable couch. If it’s winter time, put out blankets so people can stay warm or at least make damn sure you put the heating on. I saw Larry Crane, a good friend of mine in Tape Up, also wrote a very similar piece just a couple of months ago and I really enjoyed reading it because he was right. It was you know, it was don’t worry about equipment. Like no one cares about all that stuff. It’s it’s about

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: We’re about working with people and taking care of people and making people feel comfortable and that’s so so important. And so that’s that’s how this space was designed, you know. There’s a lot of funky stuff that I’ve got from thrift stores and little weird knickknacks and, you know,

Matt: Yeah. You know, I interviewed Philip Broussard. I don’t know if you know Philip, but he worked a lot.

Alex: I I kind of do it. Yeah, no, I I haven’t met him, but Philip actually took over one of my old studios when I was in LA.

Matt: Okay. So you you you might have an indication of his past history with Daniel Lanois and and what really inspired the hell out of me out of that interview was listening to Philip talk about those spaces that they would create at Teatro and in New Orleans at at Kingsway and talk about making it just so that musicians could show up and it was just like a

Alex: Yeah.

Matt: The the t the recording equipment was there, but it wasn’t overthought. It was just like, let’s just set it up, get it going, make it comfortable for people to play so a vibe could be had the minute they walk in.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. That’s it. You don’t wanna you know, you don’t wanna spend hours trying ten different mics on a guitar. But it’s like by the time you get there the guitarist doesn’t even care anymore. He’s just lost interest, you know. So yeah, it it’s good to have everything my rule is have everything set up and have everything working. The minute I find something not working, a cable, a mic, it just gets tossed. I don’t wanna deal with it, you know. Everything needs to be working all the time.

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: Yep. There was it it was originally an old garage here. Not quite big enough for a studio, but I thought, well maybe if we could just extend it a little bit, maybe it needs a new roof. You know, that was the plan. But when we got into it, you know, once they started knocking down some of the walls, they were like, This wood is fucked, it’s it’s rotten, it’s this is from the nineteen fifties. So

Matt: So you built a building from scratch, huh?

Alex: It’s probably thirty percent of the original building, you know, like the main frames and the corners were were still are still original. But then we had to add new concrete and extend it out ’cause the the live room wouldn’t have been big enough. So it’s is essentially it’s called a reefer, but it’s essentially built from scratch.

Matt: What are the pros and the cons of living in the desert?

Alex: well that’s a really good question. The pros are it’s very peaceful and quiet and there is definitely something special about the desert and people always comment about it when they come here. You know, they always say I never knew it, but there’s there’s something a little bit magical about it and and I would agree I can’t quite put my finger on it. But the yeah, there is something quite special about it. The the cons of living in the desert are it’s boiling hot in the summer and it’s freezing cold in the winter. It does snow out here and it gets very yeah, it gets very cold. And so it’s like harsh weather conditions, that’s for sure. There this like six months out of the year are great. You know, right now is is great, fantastic.

Matt: wow.

Alex: But pretty soon it’s gonna be boiling roasting hot. So there is there is that.

Matt: Yeah. I grew up in the desert southwest, so I you know, I have an experience with it, but it you know, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs and that whole part of California, man, there there’s a there’s a different kind of beauty there. It’s lovely.

Alex: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there is. And there’s a you know, there’s a lot of nature and wildlife around and you know all that stuff I think is really inspiring to make an album. Twenty years ago, if you’d asked me, I would have said it’s really inspiring being in Brooklyn and seeing all this crazy stuff going on all the time and and that you know, that worked for me at that time and that worked for energy of those particular records. But now I feel like much more at home with this this is a much better environment for somebody at my state my stage my state of mind to to be in.

Matt: Do you do you think that if you’re trying to make a heavy record, that it’s counterintuitive to be out there because it’s you’re so relaxed, or or do you think that that that has no bearing on it?

Alex: Well, I think it’s you know, that i if if you already have that music written in mind, then that’s that’s in your personality and that’s not gonna suddenly change by you know, you’re not gonna suddenly come to the the desert and w and you know, wanna suddenly start playing lap steel on everything. You know, I think it’s I don’t think it n it necessarily changes your your viewpoint too much, you know. I mean it’s I don’t know, something that’s very urban inspired, like a hip hop record. I don’t I don’t know. But I mean like I said, I think if you’re doing that, it’s already within you anyway. So it’s not gonna it’s not gonna necessarily change that. if anything, there’s less distractions because there’s less to do around here, so you tend to get things done more quickly. Th that is also one of the cons though, is also

Matt: Yeah.

Alex: We’re in the middle of nowhere. So if you break a guitar string, you’re not gonna head to guitar center. It’s you’ve got to go to Palm Springs and it’s an hour away. So I have to make sure I’ve always got drum heads, I’ve always got guitar strings, I’ve always got extra of anything that I need, because we are fairly far away. Having said that, a lot of times in LA, it could easily take you an hour to get across town. to get to guitar centre and an hour back. So it probably isn’t really any different.

Matt: yeah. So as as one as a record maker, as as an audio professional, what is your philosophy based on your experience up to this point about money, about survival? Is there an approach or a or a way you look at it to make it work for you?

Alex: that’s a really great question. I mean it’s you know, it’s the one thing no one wants to talk about in music, right? It’s the I mean, for me, my my approach, I I never envisioned being able to make a living, you know. Like me, the kid in the nineties, I would never have imagined like, in thirty five years you’re still gonna be doing this and you know, have a career doing it. I would never have imagined. So my thing was always

Matt: Right.

Alex: I just had a hunger to work with exciting artists and help them along the way. And that was all and I never really worried about the money. Or, you know, I always thought like if you just do stuff that’s really good, the money will follow. The money will take care of itself. And that’s always been my rule and it’s worked out fairly well. But what I will say is that I make enough money to get by, I can pay my mortgage. But I wouldn’t be able to pay it if I was living in a major metropolitan area, only in a urban in a s you know, a a more rural area. And I don’t spend a ton of money on fancy clothes as you can see or anything in particular. You know, I but to me it’s it’s very successful. I you know, I feel like I I get to run the studio, I get to work with really great bands. And I don’t have day job and I don’t have a boss. And that’s like my worst fear. I think my my two worst fears in life are like going to prison and having a boss with a day job, you know? And and because I’ve had to do so much of that back in the day, I really don’t want to go back ever. So to me, you know, every every day I I wake up and go, Well, I’m not a millionaire. And I don’t even have much spare money at all this month, but I have just enough to cover the studio. And I don’t have to get a day job. That’s great. I feel good. So that’s that’s my attitude on on money. It’s it’s it’s tough, but you know, you know.

Matt: Yeah. And Yeah, and y but you’re living in I guess one has to make a choice, right? You can you can live in terms of you could live in a metropolitan area, you’d have a smaller space, and you’d probably be paying twice as much. but here you’re out in the desert, it’s beautiful, you probably have more space than you would in any city. And it’s a it’s a lot more relaxing on on the soul.

Alex: Absolutely. It is, it really is. But I mean also like on a musical level, you know, I’m I’m well aware that I’ve I’ve turned down a lot of projects over the years that I didn’t feel were a good fit for or that I wasn’t a good fit for or was a genre that I don’t like or I’m not comfortable with or just the artist just didn’t resonate with me. And you know, I’ve had managers and girlfriends and friends that have said, What are you doing? You you’re turning down some of these people a actually have really good budgets. And I would just feel like, Yeah, I know, I I’m not stupid, but I just can’t do it. I just couldn’t I just not in a position to pretend I like to me it’s the would be the worst insult to any musician, you know, to pretend that I like their stuff in order to get paid and sit there, you know, while they’re y they’re doing their songs and I’m thinking, God, this is shit and then they turn to me, how was that? And I yeah, it’s really good. I just feel like I just couldn’t live with myself to do that. So yeah, it would be really, really tough. To me, music is my entire life. It’s everything. It’s so important to me. It always has been. So to me it’s like that’s the one thing that you don’t fuck with. You don’t, you know, you don’t

Matt: It would be too

Alex: lie and pretend and get involved with things that you don’t believe in. You just don’t do that. I might do it in other aspects of life that I care less about. I try not to, but it’s possible, but not with music. It’s too precious to me. So you know, I definitely could have made a lot more money than I have had. But I just wouldn’t be happy with myself. So I can at least look back and feel

Matt: Right. Yeah.

Alex: confident in those decisions. There’s you know, there’s some artists that my name has come up for and I’ve just said, you know, I’m not the right p I don’t I don’t get it. I’m not the right person for this or I don’t like it. And they’ve gone on to to sell a lot of records. I’m I mean a lot of records. And so you know there’s always that slight regret of like, well damn, you know, we could be doing this interview now from my mansion in the the hills if that was the case, you know. But I I would I just also would just hate myself. And the reality that I know to be true is that if that was the case and I’d done that record with a band I hated and they had been very successful, all that would bring me is more of those kind of projects that I hate. And I’d end up stuck in this path, you know, that I was not happy with. So Yeah, absolutely. In music industry you get pigeonholed so very quickly. And I dealt with it myself a lot as producer, you know. Years ago I worked with this band called The Locust who’s from San Diego. A very intense, aggressive band, l like if you took Devo and played it at like ten times the speed, you know, it’s just very chaotic.

Matt: Yeah, it’d be a vicious cycle.

Alex: And I didn’t necessarily always love what they were doing, but they were really awesome guys and they became really good friends of mine. And I liked what they were trying to say. I liked what they were trying to do. They were really trying to do something different. And I respected that. And so I agreed to work with them and it and it was great. But then what happened was immediately after that, every project that came in was the same sort of very chaotic, insane, you know, like non-melodic. stuff and I would think no no no I don’t want to keep doing this that’s not that’s not where I’m at. I just I just did that once but that’s not my whole thing. So then I turned down project after project and I actually didn’t work for like almost a year because of that because I had to like work my way back into more of the the type of stuff that I felt comfortable with. And that can that can really happen. And when I worked with City and Colour, I did two records of City and Colour And those records sold a lot of records. And then everybody that called after that was like a guy with a beard and tattoos with an acoustic guitar doing heartfelt songs. And I was like, no, I don’t I don’t want to be that guy who just gets stuck in the same thing. And I see that with producers a lot. And I and I feel sorry for them. I I I know why they did it. They, you know, they kept getting the work and they kept getting paid. But before you realize it, you are totally stuck in that. that genre, you know. And if that genre suddenly becomes uncool, which all genres do eventually, then you’re completely without word. So I was I always felt like I wanna just keep moving on.

Matt: It I I can Yeah, I c I can imagine like a director, like let’s say you do a couple great horror movies and then after that all people want to do is hire you to direct horror movies, but maybe one day you want to make a romantic comedy or or you wanna make a a you know, a documentary. can be very Right. No, no, no. You’re the you’re the horror director. Well, we’re we’re about

Alex: Right, and they probably wouldn’t yeah, they probably wouldn’t let you. Right. Right. So with me it’s been in it’s always been about balancing, you know, like money is the last of my concern. When a when an artist approaches me or reaches out to me, money is the last thing I think of. The first thing is let me hear your music. Let’s see if we connect on that. You know, like everybody, I have to pay my bills and I have a lot of debt, especially after building the studio. I have a lot of debt. And so You know, so I have to balance it out. But I always wanted to be in a position where I felt like I don’t I don’t want money to be the thing that b that gets in the way of of making a great album, you know. So I try to Right I don’t want it to be the deciding factor, yes. so, you know, I always try to make it work out one way or or another. So it’s

Matt: Yeah. Or the dis or the deciding factor.

Alex: you know, some clients have more than others, you know. Client that’s on a major label, you’re gonna expect them to pay a bit more of a budget than an unsigned band who no one’s heard of yet. So, you know, my rate is kinda set accordingly to that, a somewhat sliding scale based on what I think is fair in any situation, you know.

Matt: Well, before we go, I wanted to ask you, in your estimation, what do you think what’s the strength that you bring to the table when working with a band?

Alex: That’s another really good question. There’s several. One of them for me is As a producer with an outside objective opinion, I can bring a lot to the table. And this is going back to the days that I worked with Colin Richardson, where I felt like, you know, what good is a producer? We don’t need a producer. And he would suggest, you know, why is this part here? It’s way too long. Haven’t you realized it’s way too long? God is right. Why couldn’t we see that? So there’s like an objective opinion that that comes from not being involved in the songwriting that I think I’m really, really good at. But you’ve also got to be able to be good at working with people in order to com to win their trust to convince them to try taking out that part or changing that part or whatever it is. So those are the those are the two things that I’d I bring is the kind of people’s skills and and the objectivity. But I’m also my thing I guess is like I have zero interest in making a record that sounds like what everybody else is doing. I you know like I’ve had managers who say, you know, like, you’ve got you’ve got to listen to the radio and listen to what everyone else is doing and I’m like, I do. But not because I want to sound like it, because I whatever they’re doing, I’m going to do the complete opposite. Whatever I hear on the radio, I hear it, or on whatever’s currently popular and I go, Great, I’m not gonna do that. There’s you know, there’s a big thing at the moment for the the the kind of Phoebe Bridges sound, the the acoustic guitar sound and it and I love Phoebe Bridges. I think she’s incredible and I love that sound. But what is the point of just replicating that? Again, there’s zero point. I believe in making records that are timeless and that stand on their own. So to me it’s like it’s not like how can we sound like Phoebe Bridges? It’s like how can we sound as great as Phoebe Bridges sounds, but in a completely different way. And so that’s the challenge that I want to bring to records as you know, I want to do I want to make records that are unique and very specific to that artist. So what is special about this artist in particular and How can we bring that out and maximize that as much as humanly possible? Like I don’t I I don’t wanna sanitize it, I don’t wanna make it sound like other records, I don’t wanna smooth out any rough edges, I want that particular artist to be as their their personality to be as strong as possible on the on the record. So that’s what I always try to do. You know, years ago I when I was first learning My whole thing was how do you make something sound good? How do you make a snare drum sound good? What’s the technique? Or how do you make a guitar sound good? Which mic should you use to make it sound good? And I worked a long time on that, and then at some point I realized, boy, that’s a waste of time. There’s millions of people in the world that can make a snare drum sound good or a guitar sound good. It’s not particularly interesting. What is more interesting is How do make something sound unique? How do you make something sound weird and unexpected and interesting and specific to that particular artist? So those are the challenges that I that I bring to the table and try to challenge artists out of their comfort zone and to doing something that they hadn’t thought of before. Or maybe, and I invite them to challenge me to do something I hadn’t thought before. thought of before. You know, that’s always a great challenge when when somebody suggests something and I go, Ugh, I don’t know how to do that. I have no idea how to do that. But we’re gonna have fun finding out. We’re gonna we’re gonna try. So so yeah, that’s I you know, I know there’s people that that make generic records and that’s what they want to do. And they work hard at it. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s not what I want to do. I you know. So

Matt: Mm.

Alex: I’m all about making the ex experimenting as much as possible and you know unique sounds as much as possible, interesting recording techniques, anything that’s not standard. But at the end of the day, I’m also a a song guy, right? And so I believe if any of the weird character stuff that you want to do is great, but there has to be a song to hang it on. Otherwise then it’s just weird without any real meaning to it. So the best thing to me is when you get something that here’s a great song, it doesn’t have to be in a traditional verse chorus, verse chorus bridge, whatever structure. It doesn’t have to be that, but it does have to be a great song. And then you hang something unusual or unexpected on it and it just elevates it to a really unique place. So that’s that’s what I’m always always trying to bring to the table.

Matt: I love it. I love it. Well, we’re out of time, but I wanna sincerely thank you. It’s really great to talk to you. I’m glad that we had this opportunity and great to have you on the show.

Alex: You too. This is this is, you know, this this I’ve done quite a few interviews with people where we talk about production and stuff and it’s it’s oftentimes a lot about a lot of times about the gear. You didn’t really go there and you went into much more interesting, deeper subjects, really great questions and I really appreciate that. It’s much more fun to talk talk about that sort of stuff.

Matt: Well, thank you. Thank you. I always s say this to a lot of my guests. I hope at some point to to interact with you in the real world and

Alex: Yeah, that would be that would be excellent. Well, I’m well overdue for a a Bay Area trip. Алексей.

Matt: Come on up. Yeah. Fri get John Greenham along the way and and we’ll all go out.

Alex: Yeah, that would be amazing.

Matt: our connection’s getting a little wonky here. So I’m gonna so I’m just gonna say this. I’m gonna don’t hang up yet, but I’m gonna say thanks again, Alex, and we’ll talk soon.

Alex: Okay. Thank you so much, Matt. Really appreciate your time.

Matt: And then I’m gonna stop recording here.