WCA #599 with Alex Newport

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 m