JOSH NEWELL: Engineering for Linkin Park, Andy Wallace’s mixing secrets, and why pop is harder than metal

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Creative Live, the world's best online classroom for creative professionals with classes on songwriting, engineering, mixing and mastering. The Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast is also brought to you by Slate Digital, making the finest quality software and hardware products specializing in precise analog modeling of classic studio gear. The Joey URGs Form podcast is also brought to you by Focal, professional, designing, developing, and manufacturing high fidelity lab speakers and drivers for over 30 years. And now your host, Joey Sturgis, Joel Wanasek, and Eyal Levi.

Speaker 2 (00:00:38):

So how you guys doing? What's new with you? Who goes first?

Speaker 3 (00:00:44):

I'm pissed off today.

Speaker 4 (00:00:46):

Why are you pissed?

Speaker 3 (00:00:48):

I have too much shit to do, and two or three days ago I had nothing to do and it was like, cool. I'm kind of all caught up. And then all of a sudden it was just an avalanche last night. And I came in this morning and I'm like, oh my God, if I have to print stems for one more fucking song, I'm going to kill myself.

Speaker 4 (00:01:06):

Let that hate flow through you. Come on. Come on. Let it flow. I

Speaker 3 (00:01:11):

Just ate. So I'm in a positive mood and I'm looking out the window where it's sunny outside instead of gloomy. So I'm 80% less pissed than I was 20 minutes ago.

Speaker 4 (00:01:21):

Yes, let that food settle. Get into that nice little belly coma. Let the hatred, the hatred and despair or wash be gone like a wash. Though I got to say that my feelings of hatred are fucking right at the surface right now. I had had no good meal to chill me the fuck out. I am pissed. You wonder know why I'm pissed. This is nothing real. This is the thing. I don't ever get pissed about anything real. It's never like, oh wow, this job I have in front of me is so challenging. I'm going to get pissed or something like that. It's nothing like that. It's more like, why won't the alarm code work? Why will the alarm not stop fucking chiming every single time I want to open a window and wait a second, my dog's collar broke and the maid canceled. She's coming tomorrow and I have a podcast in two hours and wait a second, there's a couch being delivered between the hours of when I'm podcasting and not, and the chain broke on the dog and Oh, you hear that? And I forgot to turn off my tags. So it's like

Speaker 3 (00:02:31):

That. I don't think it was possible for al to get pissed. At least I've never heard him get pissed ever. So that's kind of exciting. Keep going

Speaker 4 (00:02:40):

Now. It's hilarious, but it's like that. It's like that. It's never anything big. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:02:45):

Before we started recording, I said, isn't that how it always works? Everything happens at the same time. It's like, what the hell? Why am I being called a billion times right before I'm about to do the podcast?

Speaker 3 (00:03:00):

It's always when you're busy too. This week I have my assistant doing a bunch of guitar effects pedals, and I kind of gave him my studio for a certain amount of hours a day. So I'm trying to not be in there and then just come in and play producer and not have any influence on the actual writing of it. And so a few times I've been in here, I've been in here on headphones and kind of just with the speakers cranking behind me, and it would be like this or that day when you're really busy and you got too much shit going on and I can't actually get in and mix anything or use my fucking speakers, I'd have 4,000 requests for stems and this and that and hey, make this revision and that. And by the way, this manager's up our ass. We got to get this done and oh my God. So go figure

Speaker 2 (00:03:44):

Everything all at once. That's just the only way it can be, have land of shit. It has to be,

Speaker 3 (00:03:48):

My new life's philosophy is just kill everyone. That's it.

Speaker 2 (00:03:53):

Well, and more and better news, I guess. Yeah. How are you Joey? I just finished my whole creative live thing, which actually went really well.

Speaker 4 (00:04:03):

I knew that shit was going to go well. I know a lot of the dudes who give their courses over there and love 'em all, especially friends of mine. But there's some of 'em who have no business teaching at all. They might be good producers, but that's where it begins and that's where it ends. It's like get 'em to try to talk to a group of thousands about how they did what they did or how to get that good or how to pick up a skill. And it's like as well just play that song while

Speaker 3 (00:04:39):

I wrote that song. Song you're going to be hearing from my lawyer for infringement.

Speaker 2 (00:04:45):

No. Well, the thing is, is that they are smart because they use the audio program to, they try to find people who aren't instructors but are really powerful creators, people who are unique in how they do what they do or unique with what they did and not necessarily looking for the next college professor who doesn't have anything unique about him except for he has the ability to present. And I think that's something that's worth noting about Creative Lives is that they try and find people who have something worth presenting over. Having someone who is a good presenter, which I would prefer any day. I'd rather watch some guy be really awkward on stage. But tell me something that is really interesting rather than have a sales pitch of a course. You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (00:05:32):

Well, I think it's got to be a fine line of every need gets met there. A, they need to be entertaining enough to be able to hold the attention of the audience for six or 12 hours. B, their material needs to be rock solid. There can be no holes. What happens when there are holes? A friend of ours learned this one the hard way is that their courses end up being 40 minutes too short every time and everybody hates them. So they need to be great speakers. B, they need to have great information. And C, all of that comes way before if they're actual professional educators or not. That part doesn't even really matter as long as you're communicating the info to people and they're understanding it well, that's what matters. And as a matter of fact, it's almost better that it's not someone who comes from traditional education, but someone who comes from the streets of life, yo, because those will often be the people in the audience checking things out. So it's good to have an audience to, I guess, instructor match like that, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:06:51):

Yeah. Well I guess if you're in school and you're learning something and the teacher's teaching it, you're not quite understanding. But then you ask another student and they put it to you in a different way. Now all of a sudden you understand it. It's kind of the same thing when you're talking about Creative Live. It's like you're one of us, but you just managed to do a lot more with it or got a lot further along with it and now we're looking to you to relate it to us.

Speaker 4 (00:07:15):

Yeah, exactly. It's, I know that me and you, Joey started in very similar ways, which is we started with bullshit and just made music until music worked for us. But that's a lot of the guys in the crowd come from that background. They're not going to go to school or they haven't gone to school. And I think it's really, really encouraging for them to hear from guys who also didn't go to school, who also started on home rigs that were just pieced together and who also had all those same challenges to see what those of us did to get out of that basement. I think that means a lot.

Speaker 3 (00:07:52):

Hey, I went to school but not for audio. And I'll tell you, after going to school for a business degree, I didn't learn shit about business getting a business degree. It was kind of like a waste of four and a half years. I mean, the chicks and the alcohol was fun, but other than that,

Speaker 2 (00:08:08):

Well, you wrote a book. So tell us a little bit about that, your experience with dealing with that. Just the backend of being an author. Oh, okay.

Speaker 3 (00:08:17):

That was a random question. Yeah,

Speaker 4 (00:08:19):

Dude, just tell us about it. Motherfucker,

Speaker 3 (00:08:23):

Many, many years ago, I used to run a very large instructional guitar site on the internet called sang guitar.com, and this was back before YouTube absolutely decimated the entire guitar instruction world. And we went all video based, but back in the day, I'm talking like 99, 98, there was shit for guitar lessons online. So I was sitting there in my college dorm as a freshman and I was really into shred guitar and I practiced more hours than should be admitted publicly because things like nerds come out,

Speaker 2 (00:08:57):

You're a guitar nerd.

Speaker 3 (00:08:58):

Yeah, that's all I eat. Breathe Chat was just guitar and speed picking and sweeping and all that stuff. So I put a couple of Lick Masterclass, here's how you Sweep Pick and broke it down and deconstructed it. And all of a sudden it just exploded over a period of two years and it went from like, Hey, 30 people checked out my site this week to holy shit, 5,000 come every week and now 10,000. And so it built into this pretty big thing. And I'm one of those guys that I always like to answer my emails no matter how I'm busy. I am eventually not saying right after somebody sends it, but hey dude, how do I sweep pick blah, blah, blah. So I used to get all these hundreds of questions every week from all these kids and I got tired of answering the same fucking 20 questions.

(00:09:37):

So I was like, alright. I was sitting there Christmas day, I don't remember what year. Don't ask. It was probably like 2004 or five or something ridiculously a long time ago. And basically I just had the idea, A kid asked me Christmas morning how to fricking sweet pick and I'm like, fuck this. I'm going to write a book because I might as well just write everything down. I know about guitar playing guitar technique, guitar practicing and all the nerdy stuff and throwing some different twists and some branding things. So I started writing a book and I spent two and a half years just doing it kind of at my shitty office job while I was supposed to be working, and I put it up and put it on my site and sold a bunch of 'em and it's still out there.

Speaker 2 (00:10:19):

Yeah. Well, tell us, there's challenges though with, you can create the content, you can put it out there and get it published and all this, but then you've got to back up everything that you said in that book. So I guess that's got to be somewhat challenging because you have the hurdle of trying to educate. Some people think this way, some other people think that way, and I'm sure that it was a challenge to have to deal with people who want to say You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (00:10:49):

Yeah. Think there's a few of those, but

Speaker 4 (00:10:51):

How did you get past the shit talkers with your book?

Speaker 3 (00:10:54):

I didn't really get a ton of it. I don't know. It was weird. I don't know how, because I mean, I could show you a litany of hate mail I used to get just from trying to be a instrumental shred guitar player and being under the age of 40 and not in some famous band. You can imagine how that pisses older dudes off who aren't quite as good at guitar. So you get a lot of haters. I mean, this is the internet, and this is especially 10 years ago, the internet where people actually used to write you 40 paragraph emails about how much of a piece of shit that you are and how much you suck at your chosen instrument, and they've never even met you or talked to you or for whatever reason you piss them off that much just by having a song on the internet or something like that. So I had hopefully a decent reputation as an instructor from my website. So a lot of the people that I think ended up buying the book were mostly fans. I mean, I went and approached a bunch of publishers and they were like, oh, this is really great, but we got Troy Satina on our staff and he's the number one guitar selling author in the world, so he could just write this book instead. And I'm like, okay, well then fuck off and write it. And he still hasn't, so

Speaker 4 (00:11:58):

This is really great, but no, thank you.

Speaker 3 (00:12:00):

Yeah, so I mean, it is what it is. It was something worth doing. I have another book that I'm actually working on, but I'm not going to tell you guys about what, but it is something I like to pick at here and there and something I like doing, but it's definitely something I never thought I would do. I never really thought I was going to be an author or write a book or try to publish a book or anything like that. That whole concept was crazy. But anything, you have an idea and you just say, I'm going to do this, and then you do it and then all of a sudden it's just like, for example, Joey called me one day, he's like, dude, we always talk about audio. You want to just start hitting the record button and make a podcast? And I'm like, yeah, dude, let's do it.

Speaker 2 (00:12:37):

I love stumbling into things, and I think a lot of people that get into this industry stumble into it. I don't know if there's a ton of people who actually go to college and then become an intern and then become a big producer. I know there's people out there that do that, but I don't think it's the majority.

Speaker 4 (00:12:52):

I think a lot of really good ideas are along the lines of, that seems like a really good idea. I'm going to try to make it happen and then somehow get really serious about making it happen. It seems like a really great idea. I guess once some test feedback comes back and you're not totally fucking up and it's a good idea. But I think that there's a lot to this game that's very, very improvisational, I guess to say the least. But we can say hi to our guest, Mr. Josh Newell, because he did go to school, didn't you?

Speaker 5 (00:13:29):

Yeah, I went to school and I interned at a big studio and did the whole old school method. Welcome

Speaker 4 (00:13:36):

To the podcast,

Speaker 5 (00:13:37):

Josh. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks. Pleasure to have you.

Speaker 4 (00:13:38):

Yeah, we are glad that you're here. Thanks for

Speaker 5 (00:13:41):

Having me

Speaker 2 (00:13:42):

On. Yeah, for sure. Well, tell us a little bit about how you did get into this and what is your story for people who aren't sure who you are or what you've done? Kind of give us a background.

Speaker 5 (00:13:52):

Okay. I'll try to keep it relatively short. I'm from Tennessee originally, and I was kind of always the guy in my bands that ended up recording practice and all that stuff. So once I discovered you could kind of make a living at it, and I'd always kind of planned on going to Standard College. Anyway, one of the local universities outside Nashville has a really good recording program. So I went and did a whole bachelor's program, which is I guess kind of weird going to recording school and having to take biology.

Speaker 4 (00:14:16):

Wait, hold up, hold up. I have a question. So you were making a living, how early were you making a living at it or making money at it?

Speaker 5 (00:14:24):

Probably I wasn't making a living at it or making money at it until my early twenties because just in college I didn't have the resources to really kind of do anything outside. I mean, I had my four track. I don't know how much older I am than you guys, but I had my four Track Pro tools wasn't really a thing yet. So I mean, I played on sessions for other people at school and stuff like that and would do other bands demos, but I wasn't really making, this wasn't my profession a hundred percent until post college. So I did four years of that, moved to la, started interning with a hip hop guy, started interning at studios and finally got on full time in early 2002 as a runner, as the studio used to be called Enterprise. Then I ended up at a place called NRG, and basically I caught the tail end of the music industry crash Napster situation. So I got to be there for when the guys had $700 a day just to spend on food to when just nobody was booking LA and studios were closing left and right.

Speaker 2 (00:15:24):

Wow. That's like the exact opposite of how I think most of us came into the game. So that's really cool to hear your story and hear how it's different than ours.

Speaker 5 (00:15:35):

I definitely don't think I was suggested as a business model at this point. I think there are upsides to doing it that way. And there are downsides. I mean, upsides, you get to see those records where they're rolling in $30,000 microphones and stuff, and it's definitely cool still. I still get to work on projects with those kind of budgets from time to time, but I don't know, it feels kind of like an archaic system at this point. It's definitely, I don't think it's the way to do things.

Speaker 4 (00:16:05):

I know from knowing you that not just did you work up the ladder the traditional way, but even the way that Lincoln Park and you, do you mind talking about that whole relationship, how that developed? I think that's interesting for people to learn. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:16:21):

I'd love to hear that story. That's

Speaker 4 (00:16:22):

So old school. Perfect story. Exactly what you would believe in. Any internship, any internship, hopeful kid believes that this is going to be their story. This is the story of their success.

Speaker 5 (00:16:40):

And I kind of wish more studio runners that I dealt with remembered. I guess it's really that approach, people remembering you. I told this story before, I think on the Create Live, but what happened was the studio I worked at is where Lincoln Park did the bulk of their records and N

Speaker 2 (00:16:58):

Rrg, right?

Speaker 5 (00:16:58):

Yeah. And they're kind of one of my bigger clients, but I started there right before they started their second record. So that was back when you were doing food runs and stuff like that, and they just kept coming back and I ended up assisting on one of their albums, and one day they just kind of glanced over and they asked, well, do you know how to chop drums? And I said, well, yeah, I know how to chop drums. And they're like, all right, well take a backup drive and can you edit the drums on this song? And I did the drums, brought 'em back. They're like, oh, this sounds great. And then we're working on something else and they kind of, Hey, can you tune vocals? Yeah, I can tune vocals, gave me backup drive. Went and edited those, brought 'em back in, and they're like, oh, yeah, this is great.

(00:17:36):

And I kind of ended up turning into the Pro Tools editor on that record. And one day when the guys told me, I don't remember how the conversation started, but he said, when we used to work here, you were the runner that didn't mess up our food orders. I always remember you never messed up the food orders. We would try to get you to do the food orders. He's like, so when you said you knew how to chop drums, I assumed you knew how to chop drums because you were always the guy we could rely on to not fuck up our sandwiches.

Speaker 3 (00:18:01):

That's an amazing piece of advice, Josh. I think that's so true. I mean, I know we can all relate to that very deeply.

Speaker 2 (00:18:09):

Yeah, well, if you're given the stage when answer a question like that, make sure you have the right answer, I guess. Yeah. You never know what that question, you never know what that might evolve into. So that's a really cool story,

Speaker 5 (00:18:24):

And I think it still kind of works if we are in a session and I have a runner that I'm asking for stuff and he's reliable, if the assistant gets sick, we'll pull that runner or that runner gets asked to do things. You do a good job, it gets remembered. But like I said, I don't know how many people are really going to come up through the major studio system anymore where that even applies. But no,

Speaker 4 (00:18:41):

But it still applies. It still applies. It applies in the small studio system because even now, let me give you modern day scenario producer who does a ton of records, one of it guys, guys of the moment does more work than he can handle. So he's got X amount of dudes who he likes to hire for editing. Say, all those guys are busy at X time or one of them is sick. So then he's going to ask around and see if there's anybody else that a buddy of his trusts or if there's another guy that he's been meaning to give a chance to, he's going to find somebody else who's going to get a chance. And that chance right there could be the chance to forge a relationship and make a really great impression, or it could be a chance to just be another alternate that won't ever rise up, at least in the eyes of this producer. So that type of thing still happens. It's just different. It's a different scenario, but I think same lesson applies.

Speaker 2 (00:19:47):

That scenario is actually how anyone that works for me gets a job. I usually find somebody through a friend or through somebody else, like an acquaintance or something like that. I give them a shot, and if they do good with that shot, then they move on to the next phase, which is getting a bigger shot. It's something more important. And then eventually, the current guy I have right now, he went through a year worth of stuff, gave him little jobs, odd jobs and little tasks for a whole year, and now he's my full-time engineer. So absolutely, I mean, when you get an opportunity like that, I guess don't drop the ball.

Speaker 3 (00:20:29):

And another good point is that established producers are always looking for people to help them because finding really committed, dedicated, true, talented people that are actually going to be team players and you're going to want to work with and that are actually going to bring value to you as a producer are very hard to find. And once you find those guys, you kind of put 'em in your head like that kid's really talented. I don't know where I need him, but at some point you may need him. So you kind of check that back in the back of your brain and then one day when the opportunity comes up, you're like, Hey, dude, can you blah, blah, blah. And then if the answer is yes and they kill it, you're like, you're hired and that's it.

Speaker 2 (00:21:03):

Do you have people that you work with, Josh or people that you, under you that you hire to do stuff for you?

Speaker 5 (00:21:09):

Most of my work still consists of pro tools, editing and engineering. So I don't do a whole lot of production unfortunately, but I do have my set call list of people. And then the other thing is I have a couple friends who are in very similar situations where actually I had a gig last week with two guys where I was a referral just because my friend had a doctor's appointment and just couldn't do the session that day. So the referral thing, I guess, I mean, what you guys are saying is exactly it. I know people I can call when I can't work or I know people when I'm working on something, you get a little overwhelmed or just need to part out some work that are on the go-to list. So yeah, what you guys are saying, knowing somebody that's reliable that won't drop the ball when you pass it to 'em is definitely a big thing. And I think a huge chunk of my work comes from referrals, so being reliable in that regard is really good for your career. That's

Speaker 2 (00:21:59):

Awesome. Are you the guy that Lincoln Park takes with them everywhere or something like that? I was at NRG and I was asking sort of the, I think he was the main engineer at least for the time period that I was there. And I was like, oh, well, Lincoln Park comes in here. Do you actually work with Lincoln Park when they come in here? And he was like, no, they bring their own guy.

Speaker 5 (00:22:23):

At the point with NRGI kind of transitioned into just engineering for them as they finished a record. And then when they came back to do the next record, I actually wasn't available. I was with another producer, so they brought in outside help, but if they go to studio now, there's kind of two of us, this friend of mine, Ethan Mates, who's been with them for 10 to 12 years now, he's kind of the main engineer slash co-producer on what they're doing. And then I am the additional engineer slash pro tools editor, so it really turns, because they'll book with all the guys in the band having everything, they'll book two or three studios at once sometimes. So just different people in different places.

Speaker 2 (00:22:58):

Oh, okay.

Speaker 5 (00:22:58):

I'm not the only primary guy, but I am one of the guys that they call when they do that just because they have multiple six guys in a band, multiple studios going, they have to have multiple people.

Speaker 2 (00:23:07):

Yeah. Well that's a badass circle to be in

Speaker 4 (00:23:10):

Quite an operation. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:23:11):

Yeah, it it's an undertaking. Can

Speaker 4 (00:23:13):

You tell us at all about how you guys kept that organized?

Speaker 5 (00:23:17):

Yeah, fortunately the guys in the band are somewhat pro tool savvy in regards, there's a whole lot of save as going on because you can be,

(00:23:28):

There's a lot of, I mean, everybody's pretty good about sending emails. This is what we're working on at this studio today, and with kind of a note, I worked on this because with a band like that, they actually ride in the studio. So someone might say, Hey, we did drums on this today and then the next day we're doing bass on it at another studio. So it's a lot of save as 1.1, and then the initials of who worked on it. So if I tune something, say Chester Bennington sings on version 3.2, it'll say Song 3.2 CB for Chester Bennington, and then if I have to tune it the next day, song 3.3 jn, which means I went through and edited and tuned what needed to be tuned, but then running multiple drives, we just kind of have a sync program, and it's really a lot of note keeping. There's just notebooks galore at the end of the sessions, which I realize is kind of old school, but sometimes it's handy just to be able to throw a notebook around instead of having to dig out somebody's laptop. Oh

Speaker 2 (00:24:21):

Yeah. Well, I always prefer to do things in a way that will withstand the test of time. So if you're using some kind of weird organization system or something like that, what happens when that company goes bankrupt and then the servers come down and you don't have any of your data anymore? Yeah, it's hard to rely on the cloud for stuff like that as well as even with email, you never know what's going to happen, so I dunno, I prefer to just have hardcore notes somewhere.

Speaker 5 (00:24:49):

There are actually, I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 25, 2 to three inch binders at this point in storage with this is how we got this guitar tone, and it's a picture of the pedal and the chain and the microphone placement, and this is the preamp setting and all that stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:25:04):

That's amazing.

Speaker 5 (00:25:04):

That's so smart. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:25:05):

I

Speaker 3 (00:25:05):

Mean, if you're thinking about organization, I feel like that's something Joey and I kind of talk about a lot because we all have a lot of different individual things going on. It's not just us producing. We've got the podcast, we've got a drum company, et cetera, and having to manage a whole team of people in every single one of those aspects. For example, as a producer, I've got five or six other guys that work for me. I got a guy that tracks drums. I got a guy that orchestrates and does additional production. I got editors. And it's keeping track of all of those systems and making systems to self reinforce those systems to make them easier can be quite the challenge. That was something I was experiencing this morning that we were kind of talking to at the beginning of the podcast, just getting organizing and organizational hell and how important it's,

Speaker 2 (00:25:49):

Well, I just became a cell phone user recently, which is surprising in its own, but the one feature with the cell phone is you can press a button and you can say, remind me to do this in four hours or on February 15th, remind me to blah, blah, blah, and then you can literally forget about that. You don't have to store all this crap in your head, and I am late to the game with that, but that's been literally a revelation for me. It's changed my life.

Speaker 3 (00:26:22):

I got to get that iPhone is what you're saying, huh?

Speaker 2 (00:26:25):

Yeah, you need to, man.

Speaker 4 (00:26:26):

Have you ever checked out the software Evernote? I

Speaker 5 (00:26:28):

Haven't. Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:26:30):

Well, I'm still learning it, but I know you guys just went on a very intelligent and artfully articulated tangent about how keeping stuff off the web is a great way to keep your files safe. I agree with that a hundred percent. But if you're not going to, I'm discovering that Evernote is a really, really great project manager. I'm just now starting to get the hang of how to use it, but people use it for managing multiple projects with multiple people, with multiple this, multiple that. And its tagline is we can organize anything.

Speaker 2 (00:27:15):

Oh, wow.

Speaker 4 (00:27:15):

Check out Evernote. It's pretty cool. Well,

Speaker 2 (00:27:17):

I currently use Google Documents pretty heavily, and in fact, I trust Google enough to know that they're probably not ever going to die.

Speaker 4 (00:27:26):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:27:26):

So I kind of keep all my stuff on there because I'm like, okay, well, worst case scenario, they're going to figure out something to where all their users can get all their stuff back if they need it. I

Speaker 3 (00:27:35):

Got into Google Docs about four or five months ago, and that was a major revelation for me in my own business in just terms of organization and making a couple of spreadsheets. Now we can track how much all the mixes, what rate we're mixing at what songs, what the progress is, who's doing this, who's doing that. If I paid my assistant, et cetera, and having that document there where it's on the cloud and I can just access it anywhere, like, hold on, Joe, did I pay you for this? Did I pay you for that? And I could just literally click it there, open. We have a color system and everything, and it just click, click and it's the best thing ever to have.

Speaker 4 (00:28:09):

I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of Google Drive. I'll wear their little banner on my forehead till the death. Only reason I looked into Evernote was because it does something that I haven't found any of the Google Drive apps to do, and believe me, I spent about two hours looking. But yeah, I think Google Drive is the best thing ever. But Josh, I want to ask you something if you're allowed to tell us about this, but Andy Wallace, right?

Speaker 2 (00:28:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:28:42):

Right. Okay. So Andy Wallace.

Speaker 2 (00:28:46):

Andy fucking Wallace.

Speaker 4 (00:28:47):

Yeah, dude, Andy fucking Wallace.

Speaker 2 (00:28:49):

That's the correct way to say that.

Speaker 4 (00:28:50):

Let's talk about him real quick if you don't mind. Nothing that'll get you in trouble.

Speaker 5 (00:28:56):

I can't think there'd be anything that would get me in trouble. Okay.

Speaker 4 (00:28:59):

Andy Wallace.

Speaker 5 (00:28:59):

So what do you want to know? Just Andy

Speaker 4 (00:29:01):

Wallace. Dude. Andy Wallace.

Speaker 2 (00:29:04):

Alright. Wait, because people listening to this might not know. So what's the story? What's the connection if

Speaker 4 (00:29:10):

They don't know who Andy Wallace is? Okay, but

Speaker 5 (00:29:14):

Sorry. Yeah, pause the podcast and go see who Andy Wallace is. If you don't know who Andy Wallace is, did you work with him? The last Lincoln Park record, he mixed, so they flew him in from New York to mix while we finished tracking in the other room. Oh

Speaker 2 (00:29:28):

Wow, okay.

Speaker 5 (00:29:29):

Which, I mean, Andy Wallace is one of those guys I think. I mean, everybody geeks out on him to agree. And Jay Rustin was calling me, what's it like working with Andy Wallace? And I was like, I kind of want him to be my granddad. That's awesome. He looks like your grand, he's an old guy with a beard and yeah, he's got that driving Sean

Speaker 3 (00:29:51):

Connery thing going on. He is like the Rock

Speaker 4 (00:29:54):

Dude. I'd work with Sean Connery too. I would let Sean Connery mix my album and then I'd have Andy Wallace, then I'd have Andy Wallace remix it.

Speaker 5 (00:30:05):

I mean, just every record I could think of growing up that we listened to. And Ethan, who I mentioned before, the other engineer, he was geeking out as well. The guy's just done everything from Slayer to Guns N Roses to Nirvana and all that stuff. And he was just the nicest of guys and would just hang out in the lounge and chit-chat about vintage cars, his dog, whatever you wanted to know about, Hey, what was it like doing Slayer Records back in the day?

Speaker 4 (00:30:34):

So what was it like doing Slayer Records back in the day?

Speaker 5 (00:30:38):

Apparently working on seasons in the Abyss and all those records was actually a pretty good time, but just talking about how they came up with production elements like, all right, well we need, with what Slayer's doing, we have to figure out a way to make this all cut through. Well, what if we do the drums super dry and don't use a lot of room mics and fake reverb and just talking to the guy that's figuring all of that stuff out. He mixed run DMC's raising Hell, he did Jeff Buckley and he's, but the cool thing with working with him was he kind of works on whatever is available equipment wise. He came in, okay, I think he asked them to rent an SSL compressor or the Allen Smart Compressor instead of using the one built into the nine k, I think is what we were mixing on. And that was it. One song, he used a distress run of vocal, but everything else was in the board. I mean, aside from reverbs and delays, but just, yeah, I need these pair of speakers and this one piece of outboard gear and I'll just do everything on the board. That's amazing. That's

Speaker 2 (00:31:36):

Awesome.

Speaker 5 (00:31:36):

And I really thought it was going to be a case of, alright, when he leaves, at the end of the day I'm going to go in and figure out what he's doing. And to this day I still have no idea just looking over the board at the EQs and the compression settings and there was nothing there that was like, aha, that's a trick I'm going to pick up. The guy just has amazing ears and what a surprise comes down to the ears. Yeah, right. What's that T word

Speaker 2 (00:31:59):

Talent once again? Yeah, talent, skill and ears.

Speaker 5 (00:32:03):

Yeah, there was just nothing there. Not that he's not doing anything that there wasn't a way to really glean information and unfortunately it wasn't a situation where I could sit in the room with him while he mixed because we were still tracking. But I mean, I got to work on a project with Andy Wallace, so check that off the bucket list.

Speaker 2 (00:32:20):

Did he have a lot of automation?

Speaker 5 (00:32:22):

Yeah, that was the one thing is he looped sections of the song for half an hour to an hour at the time and just did a ton of micro rides. So when you watch the mix play back at the end, the faders just all the faders twitched pretty much throughout the entire mix.

Speaker 2 (00:32:38):

That's awesome. So yeah, that's kind of the same thing I always preach about Chris Lorde is kind of the same way. It's all about the rides and the automation. That's what really makes the mix move and makes it exciting. I think there's a lot of people who want to know, well, what kind of gear are you using or how are you hooking it up? Are you running 2 11 76 s into each other? It's like none of that really matters. I mean, sure you can get some interesting sounds doing stuff like that, but bottom line, what makes those dudes so powerful is the choices that they make and their ears are what's driving this.

Speaker 4 (00:33:14):

Lemme just throw in for our less educated listeners that by the rides they mean automation moves AKA volume, not ride symbols. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:33:29):

It's all about that ride symbol, man.

Speaker 4 (00:33:31):

I could see someone listening to this and being like, oh, it's all about the rides blasting all about blasting there. Andy does it the

Speaker 3 (00:33:38):

Real way. Right. Andy does it the real way. Right? He sits there on the console and moves his finger instead of sitting there with a fucking pencil tool and just having at it for a couple hours on the Pro Tools. Well,

Speaker 5 (00:33:48):

He probably doesn't have a computer anywhere. Well, he did have his usual mix assistant come in. Do you guys know who Josh Wilber is? Yeah. Hell yeah. He was Andy's guy for a long time, but Andy's guy now is this guy, Paul Suarez, I think is his last name. But Paul sets the session up and then lays it out on the board and then the Pro Tools rig sits over in the corner with this screen facing Paul in case Andy needs anything changed. But I mean, Andy runs the session from the controller on an SSL. He hits play there, never looks at the screen. Pro Tools works like a tape machine with him

Speaker 4 (00:34:21):

That's sick. Josh Wilber has gotten one of my favorite modern metal sounding mixes maybe of all time on the latest Gojira, especially the drum mix. But it just goes to show to me, Josh Wilber is one of those guys like Jay Rustin or something who's just God, just God man, his mixes are coming through from a higher place, but it just goes to show that Josh Wilbur is Andy Wallace's assistant. Makes sense. Not surprised

Speaker 5 (00:34:57):

Well was, but yeah, I can imagine working for that. I think he worked with him for five plus years, so I'm very envious of Josh in that regard.

Speaker 2 (00:35:06):

So what's some other interesting, either mixers or producers that you've worked with, anything that sticks out in your mind as kind of shocking to people who are in this whole audio life, things that might be interesting for them to hear?

Speaker 4 (00:35:20):

Or clients too? Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:35:22):

Clients as well. I know you've worked with quite a laundry list of clients.

Speaker 5 (00:35:26):

I mean, one that'll surprise the metal guys. I worked on the last Al Levine record, which was produced by Chad Krueger from Nickelback, and a lot of metal dudes are going to be bummed on this, but Chad was really super nice, a really cool guy. I felt really bad about how I'd felt about Nickelback up until that point.

Speaker 3 (00:35:43):

We're going to let you in on a little secret. Joey and I both love Nickelback, but don't tell anybody. Alright, all right.

Speaker 2 (00:35:48):

Yeah. If you look at my iPod, I mean, I'm willing to admit it. I just, it's what I like. I don't give a shit what people think about what I like on my iPod. If you scroll through the artists, you're going to see almost one album or so from every artist, but from Nickelback. I literally have every album possible, including all the single releases.

Speaker 4 (00:36:07):

You'll never hear me say a bad word about Nickelback. I'm

Speaker 5 (00:36:10):

Not allowed to play it, but somewhere I have a rough mix of they were going to get a guest rapper on a song. So Chad did the kind of interim rap part.

Speaker 4 (00:36:18):

Oh, no.

Speaker 5 (00:36:19):

So somewhere I have a recording of the guy from Nickelback rapping kind of in the style of Eminem, and he was actually really, really good at it.

Speaker 4 (00:36:27):

Oh, come on dude. Nobody's going to hear this podcast.

Speaker 5 (00:36:30):

And very, very, right. I told him to drive somewhere and he came in. He is like, how was it? I was like, that was really, really good. And if you had told me five years ago that I'd be recording the guy from Nickelback rapping on an Avro Levine song, I wouldn't have believed you

Speaker 2 (00:36:47):

And he must be a blast in the studio. He seems like he's a really intelligent guy if you follow his career. He's written tons of songs for people that people don't even realize it, and he's, from what I understand, he's pretty savvy in the studio. He absorbed all the information that he learned from Mutt Lang and all the different producers that they've worked with over the years. Right?

Speaker 5 (00:37:06):

Yeah. He was very, very meticulous and he's very aware of what he's doing. I'm honestly kind of surprised that they go with outside producers, but it may just be a case of I could see we're in a band at that level. Having an outside producer would be the way to go just to get decisions made in say, a disagreement about a part, et cetera. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:37:25):

You want to have that backup plan. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:37:27):

The

Speaker 4 (00:37:27):

Words of the wise though, because we have talked to some of our listeners, like when we do this thing called Mixed Grit Monday where we critique their mixes, they send it in, we trash it, but one of the things that keeps coming up is that we get guys who have produced and engineered and mixed their own band songs or whatever. The number one advice I give them always, always, always, always is have somebody else mix your stuff, go to a real producer. You don't have enough of a bird's eye view on your own music to make the right decisions, and you're just proving my point again, even at the highest levels of the music industry, a k Nickelback, he has outside producers

Speaker 5 (00:38:15):

In regards to people I've worked with, now that we've all confessed our secret love for Nickelback, I guess one of the upsides for working at a big studio over the years, kind of a big budget place, is you do get to work with a lot of guys that are kind of people that you've heard about. I've gotten to handoff mixes to Chris Lord Algae and many Quinn and Neil Alvaron, and I've gotten to work with guys like Joe Chiarelli and Ross Hogarth, Rick Rubin.

Speaker 4 (00:38:44):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:38:45):

I worked with John Bryan. I dunno if you guys are familiar with John Bryan. That's really an experience that guy's ears are, should be in the Smithsonian. They're just incredible.

Speaker 4 (00:38:53):

Did you say James Bond?

Speaker 5 (00:38:55):

Wow.

Speaker 4 (00:38:56):

Or John Bryan, sorry, John Bond.

Speaker 5 (00:39:03):

John Bryan came in to mix a Dito record and the NRG runs on these large dine audios, and he came in and he sat down. He was playing a few things and he asked, he said, are these different tweeters than what was in here? When I did Fiona Apple, which I think at that point was maybe seven, eight years ago, I said, well, I'm sure they've been reconned or retweeted. He's like, oh no, I don't mean that. Is it a different model tweeter? Because it sounds, I forget how he described it, but it sounds different at 1612 to 16 K like this. I said, okay, hold on. I went and got the studio Tech asked him and he said, yeah, actually it is a different model Tweeter. I have a pair of the old ones we could solder in real quick. Went and got the tweeters, we swapped them out and just being able to do the quick like that, it was the exact difference he had described, but he could remember that seven years after the facts that, oh, it's 16 K, these new ones are a little bright. Yes. That's amazing. Which was,

Speaker 4 (00:39:54):

Let me ask you a question. Do you remember around what year that was

Speaker 5 (00:39:57):

That this happened? Yeah, maybe 2008 ish. It's been a while.

Speaker 4 (00:40:06):

2008 ish. And she okay guessing that he did the record, that she fell off the map afterwards from,

Speaker 5 (00:40:17):

I'm trying to remember. No way the,

Speaker 4 (00:40:20):

I'm going somewhere with this, by the way,

Speaker 5 (00:40:22):

Quite possibly. I know the record didn't end up doing all that. Well, I'm not sure where you're going, so I don't want to cut off your story. I have my theories about why it didn't go so well.

Speaker 4 (00:40:29):

Oh, well, I was just going to throw out a little story about Fiona Apple that when I was,

Speaker 5 (00:40:38):

Oh no, the Fiona Apple record he did was the one when the Pawn, and it's the super long title. I'm not sure what year that would've been done, but we were doing a Dito record at the time that he asked about the tweeters. So I was confused on which one you were discussing.

Speaker 4 (00:40:52):

Okay, so Fiona, apple got big as in really big in the mid nineties, and then she had her little spiel, her little meltdown, and then disappeared for a while, and then she had a comeback and I don't know what happened with that. I'm just trying to figure out if he did the comeback record or if he did the one, the one that, what's his name again?

Speaker 5 (00:41:19):

John Bryan, B-R-I-O-N. He did, because Criminal was her big song in the nineties, but that wasn't the record he did, he did the next one and then, yeah, she disappeared. But her comeback record, he started on it and then it got finished by, I'm blanking on his name, the guy that was Dr. Dre's bass player forever. He did a Mastodon record. Mike can't think of his name. That was supposed to be the big comeback record.

Speaker 4 (00:41:44):

Well, I had an interesting night the night that I got to see her live. I went to the Grammys that year. It was the year of her breakdown, and she was a performer and I was special guest of some big shot lawyer guy. And so got to do the whole thing and got to see her alive and was like, oh my God, what a voice. Holy shit. And he leans over to me and he's like, just watch in about six months time, you're not going to remember who this bitch was. I was like, okay. Yeah. Makes me wonder sometimes, I mean, I'm all for create your own future and I'm a very conspiracy free kind of guy, but when a lawyer of that size leans over and is like, her days are numbered watch, and then he chuckles about it and then literally six months later she's off the deep end and gone. It's very, very interesting to me. That's all. That's my tangent. Just keeping things real anyways,

Speaker 5 (00:42:49):

You know what, Mike Elizondo was the producer I was trying to think of.

Speaker 4 (00:42:52):

Okay.

Speaker 5 (00:42:54):

Yeah, I kind of feel like Fiona Apple is in one of those cases where even if she dropped off the map, she'd be okay with it. She seemed, she came by the studio while we were working because she and John Brian are still friends and she seems very kind of introverted,

Speaker 4 (00:43:09):

But

Speaker 5 (00:43:10):

I also think her success in the nineties gave her enough money to kind of do whatever she wants

Speaker 4 (00:43:14):

Good for her.

Speaker 5 (00:43:15):

So I think she kind of does that. She has her, I don't think she's ever going to shoot for having a massive commercial success again. Anyway.

Speaker 4 (00:43:22):

So her you to the industry was a heartfelt f you to the industry.

Speaker 5 (00:43:27):

Yeah. Great. I mean, even to some degree, I think as soon as she got some control of her, her music was never seemed like major label pop market machine. So I think part of her success, and you could almost say it about I think she falls in that category, FEMA artist with Tori Amos and Ani DeFranco, where they just kind of get to do their thing and they have their fan base and they're happy doing that.

Speaker 4 (00:43:48):

So let me ask you a question. Let me ask you a question, because a lot of people in the metal community seem to think that the pop world is easier musically. Yeah, no, but I'm serious. A lot of people in the metal world and in the production metal world, not the big guys of course, but a lot of people coming in seem to think that pop is easy stuff. Just like you just get some guy to write a song for somebody else and spit it through a few presets that make the autotune sound, get the bitch to do a few dances and you're good. And that's all it takes to pop, and I think that pop or the Navy Seals of production.

Speaker 2 (00:44:33):

Well, I want to piggyback that question because I think this will be a good example. The new Avril Levine record, I listened to it, and so you did some of the work on that, right, Josh?

Speaker 5 (00:44:43):

Yeah, I think over the course of a year and a half on it, I was one of a number of engineers that came through, but yeah, yeah, I worked on that record.

Speaker 2 (00:44:50):

Okay. Boom. Right there. First off, year and a half of work going into one album. Alright, that's right there. Mind blowing for the metal community because most metal albums are made in 30 days. Well,

Speaker 4 (00:45:03):

Wait, wait, wait. Let me ask you something. How many songs we're working on before they all got cut down?

Speaker 5 (00:45:10):

I remember at one point there was, let me think. We kind of caught, I kind of came in, I think the better part of a year into the project, and at that point, by the time we were done on the session I was on, we had enough material for an album and they even sent a lot of it to Chris Lord Algae, and they had mixed a lot of it. They had people from the label come in and it was kind of, I got sent from the producer who hired me just out of How is that going? He's like, oh, I think we have the album. He sent me 12 songs, mixed mastered that basically were supposed to be the album, and then the album didn't come out for another six to nine months and half of the album had changed at that

Speaker 4 (00:45:50):

Point. So down from there, were there ever like 30 or 40?

Speaker 5 (00:45:53):

I don't know if it ever got that high, but I would say there's at least 25.

Speaker 3 (00:45:56):

Well, you got to count for submissions too though, because sometimes on a pop artist, the writer camps all bid in and they'll send out a thing across all the managers that manage those guys and they'll be like, Hey, we need a song for fill in the blank. And then everybody submits three or four songs and then you have a huge pool base, and then they actually start picking the songs that they're going to pick from. There's that dynamic too,

Speaker 2 (00:46:17):

But AVR and Chad wrote almost all the songs on the album.

Speaker 5 (00:46:21):

It was the two of them, and this guy, David Hodges, who's the guy, the producer that hired me, David does a lot of pop stuff, a lot of female pop stuff, but they wrote most of it. But then they ended up bringing in this guy Martin Bennett who is in that band, boys like Girls. He ended up doing a lot of songs. Once they got past that initial 12 that they were going to put on the album, then I think they ended up writing another half dozen with him. But even working on to the degree of the number of songs that you can have on a record and have it not happen or working on a record and not come out, my first big Lincoln Park record, we spent two and a half years on off and on, and that turned into 50, 60 songs, and then the next record they came out with, I think half of the songs on that album had been from the prior album sessions. So some of that big commercial stuff you've got to remember, I think it was first brought to my attention when I saw that Metallica documentary, when was it some coming at Monster? Wasn't that the

Speaker 2 (00:47:15):

Metallica

Speaker 5 (00:47:16):

Or Lincoln Park or Avro Levine or something like that. That's not just a band that's a multimillion dollar industry.

Speaker 2 (00:47:21):

Yeah, it's like a whole corporation almost. I mean, it's just a ton of people that are working for that name.

Speaker 4 (00:47:27):

Yeah. The reason I say that, just because Joey's saying, look, a year and a half spent on those songs, and to take that a step further or to just say, look, it's as opposed to say the local band who has the same eight songs for five years. These guys are, yes, they're working forever on their collection of songs, so they're getting whittled down from 30 songs with multiple submissions and multiple teams and really working it down to the very, very best. And even then when you got 12 that were supposedly ready to go, even then six of them changed,

Speaker 2 (00:48:07):

Or you do 12 more just to see what else can we do

Speaker 5 (00:48:10):

With this? I think the thing with that was they just kind of said, we don't hear a first single, so these are great, but there's no first single.

Speaker 3 (00:48:18):

Oh, I hate that line when they say that.

Speaker 2 (00:48:22):

No, that's great though, because that's a good point because when you're talking about millions and millions of dollars and hundreds, maybe even thousands of people relying on this doing well, it fucking matters.

Speaker 3 (00:48:36):

Joey, you remember Sean's band? Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:48:38):

Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:48:38):

This is maybe 2008. I had a local band that I had developed and produced that kind of had gotten picked up by Universal Motown, and they went out into writer land and they wrote like 60 songs and they had some incredible songs and they never came out with the record. Well, the label eventually folded and closed the shop and dropped everybody with their debt, but basically just, we don't have the lead off single yet. We don't have the lead off single yet. Keep writing, keep writing. And I mean, they wrote with everybody from Howard Benson to Matt Squire, and they went around the country and that's all the guy did for two years was just write songs and just, they weren't ready to throw the house behind it yet.

Speaker 4 (00:49:17):

Bummer.

Speaker 2 (00:49:17):

Yeah, that's frustrating situation because I actually have heard a lot of stuff that Sean's written and it's really good. They're called The Royals, right? The

Speaker 3 (00:49:27):

Royals, yeah. Well, they were called Mechanical Kids, but then they rebranded and changed a few members and now they're the Royal and they're still,

Speaker 2 (00:49:33):

Yeah, if you're listening and you want to check 'em out, look up the Royals on YouTube.

Speaker 4 (00:49:37):

Ever heard of a band called Daughters of Mara?

Speaker 5 (00:49:40):

Yeah, Josh Wilbur mixed that going full circle.

Speaker 4 (00:49:44):

Yeah. Daughters of Mara. That was a band that got signed to Who? Atlantic.

Speaker 5 (00:49:50):

That sounds right.

Speaker 4 (00:49:51):

Or somebody around the year 2 0 7, 2007, something like that in that range. The drummer, by the way, is fucking unbelievable,

Speaker 2 (00:50:05):

Dave.

Speaker 4 (00:50:05):

Unbelievable, unbelievable. He's gone on to play with the Mars Volta, to play with Miley Cyrus. I've got in the pleasure of jamming with him once he's in that band with Max Caval and the dude from Macedon and a guy from,

Speaker 5 (00:50:25):

Oh, killer be killed.

Speaker 4 (00:50:26):

Yeah, killer. Be killed now. Okay. Their story, and apparently the other dudes in the band were also awesome, but they got signed to the major deal. The whole nine got the big production. Josh Wilber and g Garth, right, I believe. And they got shelved. Shelved for two years, something bad enough to where the band then broke up. And the singer is a poor dude who's afraid of the music industry living in Arizona by himself, and some of them have odd jobs in the Orlando area except for Dave, the drummer, who has gone on to become a force in the industry as far as session drummers go. So shit happens, man, it really does. The

Speaker 5 (00:51:20):

Major pop machine, it's weird because they'll still put that kind of effort into pop artists. I don't think they do it as much with rock bands anymore, at least in my experience. I worked for a number of years. Well, David Hodge is the guy from my Avil Levine story. He was one of the original members of Evanescence and I worked with Evanesce Essence's guitarist for, I still work with him off and on, but I was exclusively his guy for about two years. And he was telling me when they first got signed, the band got signed, they moved him to LA and they put him up in an apartment and made them write songs for a year plus, just because they didn't hear anything. The label was just funding that like, oh, you guys are great, but nothing you're doing is that great. So just write and write and write. And maybe that still happens. I mean, your story with the guy having to go write with Matt Squire, but it's doing rock records or metal records, I don't think pop's easier.

Speaker 2 (00:52:12):

I think it's way more difficult. And I think that's kind of the big point of the, this whole segments. Yeah, you listen to a pop song and you're like, okay, they repeat the same line like 40 times and the song has four chords, but to get to that point took a shit load of time and energy and money and years spent engineering it and trying multiple, I mean, is this something that you go through? Are you recording the top line many, many, many times before they pick one?

Speaker 5 (00:52:47):

Yeah. When we did Avril stuff, and this is part of me realizing that Chad was maybe way more talented and people were giving him credit for, we were doing multiple passes of vocals and he would down to, I like the A in that word. I like the way she inflected this and make a note of this takes, it was just notepad after notepad of takes. It's weird though. Some pop artists, you'll get that you'll get 30 takes until they hear it. Other pop artists, and this is kind of what's a little frustrating at times, there's so much else going on with them having a perfume line launch and this appearance and that appearance that you're spending all day working on their track. They come in for an hour and then they're like, all right, we'll just make the vocal out of that and make the double and make the harmonies.

(00:53:29):

And I've had sessions where you have to build words like, wow, she never said that again. And you want it doubled, but they had to go to their whatever perfume launch or movie premiere. So it's pops an interesting thing when you're working on a pop production and you're listening to the transition from reverse to a chorus. If you're working with a rock band or a metal band, it's a lot of, well, maybe the kick pattern should change here. Or we'll overdub a guitar. You kind of have your set elements you're working in with pop, you'll go, well, we're losing some energy here, so let's figure out where the energy is. Okay, well the energy feels like we have this tambourine going here, and then there's nothing in the pre-course, so maybe we need a high hat and you just start going through any or maybe a beeping sound.

(00:54:12):

We just need something in this weird frequency range. So pop production is strange in that regard, that possibilities are so broad that it takes a while to figure out what that thing is going to be. Damn. And you're also always searching for kind of that gimmick. What's the Taylor Swift? We're never getting back together where there's that bit in the bridge where it sounds like a recording of her talking to her girlfriend in her room, but it's kind of a crappy recording. I remember that song coming out and working with a pop producer at the time and him just going, this is genius. Why did I not think of this? So there's always that pressure in a pop production to come up with Thatchers autotune believe voice. There's always got to be that something

Speaker 4 (00:54:50):

That's ultra relevant to the kids of today. Yeah,

Speaker 5 (00:54:53):

You need that thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:54:54):

I think it'll be eyeopening for people listening to this to kind of hear these stories because I don't think there's enough people out there that really think about music production with Open enough mind in terms of if you're a metal guy, you play metal guitar. And so the only thing that you think about is like, man, how do I make the kicks? How do I make the kicks sound better? And it's all you think about for your whole life, but there's all these other things. It's like, okay, well, we have the best kick sounds ever. We have 60 of 'em and we also have 60 songs using the best Kick sounds ever, and we still don't have a great song. It's like there's a whole world of stuff that I like to just open eyes with this podcast. I'm glad that you could come over on here and enlighten us with some of these stories.

Speaker 4 (00:55:48):

Josh, do you know anybody that works on any Maroon five records?

Speaker 5 (00:55:52):

Well, I met Mike Shipley right before he passed away. He had done some, but I did do some sessions with Matt Wallace way back when I was an assistant at rg. And I want to say one of his engineers that came in was the guy that engineered the songs about Jane. Wasn't that the first album? Yeah.

Speaker 4 (00:56:08):

Yeah.

Speaker 5 (00:56:08):

So I've met some guys that worked on that, but I don't know anyone that's currently working on Maroon five.

Speaker 4 (00:56:13):

I was going to say, anyone who wants to get good at transitions should check out Maroon five songs about Jane and then the two records after that, because I mean, after that they became a pop band, but before that, there were a rock band with pop elements and their transitions are so brilliantly done and everyone is so well thought out. There's ideas for Miles for Metal people.

Speaker 3 (00:56:36):

I feel like that band is a case study and just branding and successfully redefining the image and sound of a band while still having its sound and being able to just make something out of, I don't know. Oh, they rebooted. It's just an amazing job at it. It's just incredible watching their career.

Speaker 4 (00:56:56):

What else? That's band is a testament to that band is the testament to the old style of developing bands working because they were a bunch of dudes in a van who were their first record bombed and they toured for a couple years with label support in a van making a hundred bucks a night just like everybody else does it. But for some reason, their major label didn't drop them, which is unbelievable. That's unheard of them. So by the time that record that we all know got huge, well, the band had already been out for ages. That's not like that song. What's it called? Not This Love. This Love is Pantera, but what's that song called?

Speaker 2 (00:57:48):

No, they have a song called this one. Yeah, this song's This Love.

Speaker 4 (00:57:50):

Okay. Yeah. This Love Isn't the product of a brand new band that's a band who had been in the trenches for years and who just never got dropped because their label actually believed in artist development, which is a dead thing. But imagine if they had come out the gate, not too strong, not the best numbers, and got dropped, boom. What an amazing loss of talent and money for the industry.

Speaker 5 (00:58:17):

From what I understood too, that songs about Jane Record, I mean, it was the case of what you said they hadn't hit, but I want to say it came up when I was working with Matt, I want to say the total budget on that record was $80,000. They did it all in his kind of private production room where he could just overdub. So the fact that it hit the way it did was kind of a big surprise. But they think, and I'm really hoping I get these, I'm pretty sure it was that record that I was talking about with this guy, but he said the whole thing was done and it just didn't feel right. So they went back and recut all the drums and kind of an r and b style, and that was the light bulb moment. Basically. They had this pop record done and no, this is all pretty good, but there's no lead thing. And they went back and retreated all the drums and I think some of the bass, and then it just became this huge monster.

Speaker 2 (00:59:02):

So

Speaker 5 (00:59:02):

It's one of those, the label's like here's a little bit, try to give it a shot.

Speaker 2 (00:59:06):

Have you ever worked on anything that went through Mutt Hands?

Speaker 5 (00:59:11):

No, unfortunately, that would definitely be awesome. But the closest I got, I was working with a band that Mike Shipley was going to kind of come in and take care of, but then that was unfortunately right before he passed away.

Speaker 3 (00:59:21):

That would've been amazing.

Speaker 2 (00:59:23):

Yeah. Well, Mike Shipley, if anyone is listening to this and doesn't know who he is, I think he was kind of the right hand man for muting, for mixing, right? Pretty

Speaker 5 (00:59:31):

Much. Yeah. He was Mutts engineer. He's kind of the guy that figured out the Def Leppard sound and those huge, from what I understand, a lot of that was Mike Shipley.

Speaker 2 (00:59:40):

So he's responsible for a lot of shit

Speaker 3 (00:59:43):

Over, I think 200 million records sold. If I remember reading correctly, I think I was looking at his discography like a year or two ago. If you look on Gear Sluts, he was a pretty active poster there, and I think his name was Ship Shape or something like that. You could search, and he drops a lot of good gems. I remember doing that one day and just kind of printing out and archiving his posts and reading them every day and studying. So there is some good info out there from Mike Shipley that he was able to provide to the community before he kind of passed. Absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:00:12):

And that brings me to one last question I have for you, just it is really, really interesting to me. Lots of guys are good at one thing. They're one trick ponies. We all know one trick ponies, but there's a lot of guys that people don't know enough about that are just badass engineer producers who get to work with all different kinds of music. And so we've been talking about Lincoln Park and Avril Levine and stuff, but I'd like to know how you approach a band like Cynic or a band Inau, which is radically different than those bands.

Speaker 5 (01:00:56):

Cynic, I really just got hired straight on as an engineer. I was at work one day and my phone rang and I didn't know the number and I picked it up anyway, and it was Paul Vidal going, hi, this is Paul Vidal from Cynic. I hope you don't mind. I got your number from Inau. It's like, yeah, we want to record drums with you, which was awesome. And then going in with those guys, I know you guys have worked with Sean before.

Speaker 4 (01:01:21):

Yeah, I've recorded Sean and I've been in a solo project with him. He's godly,

Speaker 5 (01:01:26):

But he came in and I asked, what's the approach you want to do? And he said, I want to approach this like a jazz record, and I don't want a super snappy kick drum, and I have two high hats and three rides and whatever else. And they didn't record to a click, and he just really, he wanted it to sound more like a jazz kit. So it was a completely different approach to drum recording than what you would normally do for metal band. And they came in, did three songs in a day, and he sat and listened and like, all right, well, the song speeds up here and it slows down here, but I feel that's the way it's supposed to work. So I think it is one of the upsides of working in a place of working in a big studio and coming through the big studio system is you do work with a lot of different people and a lot of different approaches.

(01:02:11):

So it puts you in a little better place and maybe not puts you in a better place, but you get to see so many different approaches to recording so many different people do things differently. And then it really comes down to the project you're working on. If you're doing drums with Questlove on a Dito song with John Bryan, it's a completely different thing than when you have a drummer like Dave Elitch from Come In and do metal drums. It's different mic choice, different mic placement. And then that's the thing with Inau, it's been a perpetual experiment with them in coming up with this natural kind of sound that still works as a modern metal thing. And I guess, well, I don't know. They're trying to keep it secret, but I've been emailing their singer today about going into record their next record, and we're talking about doing the entire thing live in the studio in three days, three or four days. They just did that cloud kicker recording where they did the whole thing live in a day. So the plan is to shoot for live tracking everything in maybe three or four days with a couple punches overdubs, and then that's how they're going to do the record, which is a very drastically different approach from the way most metal bands do records.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):

If anyone could do it though, it would be them and you.

Speaker 5 (01:03:21):

Well, more so them. They're great players. But also this would be our fourth or fifth record together. So we kind of have a working pattern at this point. I've

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):

Always wanted to do a record like that, and I've tried to talk a couple bands into it, but it just takes a certain type of performer and a musician to be able to actually pull that off. Well, not just a musician, but a multiple musicians that also have chemistry.

Speaker 5 (01:03:47):

And we had talked about doing this with them for a while, and I think doing the cloud kicker thing is what's making it really more realistic for them. But even with their records, the drums aren't chopped. If we do a whole take and once snare hits late in the field, we'll nudge that. But I think the fact that they do their records, that also is going to make it more possible. Then there are those bands that just need that machine like precision where you're going to have to do multiple takes and edit. And then there are bands every now and then where you can just do a whole live off the floor thing.

Speaker 4 (01:04:13):

But don't let me let anyone get confused. Danny Walker, the drummer from Inau is a machine. He's fucking great.

Speaker 5 (01:04:21):

Actually, the very first time I recorded him, it was for this Sid Barrett tribute album, and Danny came in and he's like, well, I have a gig to play with in nine bands. He's like, I have another gig tonight, so we're just going to knock out drums and do everything else. And it took us longer to set up and mic everything than it did to record

Speaker 4 (01:04:37):

It,

Speaker 5 (01:04:38):

Because his first pass was perfect.

Speaker 4 (01:04:41):

And

Speaker 5 (01:04:41):

He was like, you know what? I want to do a different Tom fill here. And we just ran it down a second time and he was done and left.

Speaker 4 (01:04:47):

Yes,

Speaker 2 (01:04:47):

That's

Speaker 5 (01:04:47):

Awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:04:48):

We love that shit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):

Well, you have the pleasure of working with a lot of people who can pull those kinds of things off. And I think that is kind of also eyeopening to this audience because I think a lot of times we're working with people who can write stuff that they can't play, and it becomes quite a challenge to figure out how to actually record that and make it sound good. And all the time we're saying these productions, these mixes, the reason why they're great is because we make sure that everything that we're recording and everything that's going into the project is absolutely awesome, and not accepting anything subpar, but when you're dealing with someone who doesn't really have anything subpar, it's kind of hard to worry about that.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):

Yeah, the unfortunate, I guess, byproduct for a while, and I think this is what didn't help with the win, the whole Napster thing, and kind of the music industry shut down in the mid two thousands was pro Tools got to a point where people were like, oh, we can fix anything, and we can sign bands based on their looks. So there are as often as I get to work with session guys, because if you get a good session player, your life is just easier. And you have Josh Freeze come in and play drums, it sounds perfect. Everything's great. There's no off hit, there's no weak hit. It sounds like a machine, and that's great. But there are also, and I wouldn't name names, but there are young bands that will come in to do a record for the first time, and they don't, you guys would know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):

Oh, yeah. Well,

Speaker 5 (01:06:15):

I'm just saying, you can be a good live band, but then you get in the studio and you find out it's a completely different animal.

Speaker 4 (01:06:20):

It's

Speaker 3 (01:06:20):

A click track.

Speaker 5 (01:06:21):

Yeah, exactly. We don't want to play to a click because that's going to ruin the field. You still get stuck doing, and a lot of my work is still pro tools editing. You still get stuck in situations where you are building parts and moving every single hit, alright, kicks and snares are on Jesus, that high hat's terrible and moving that around and tons and tons of editing where it's,

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):

I like the building the word example. I've had to do that a couple times for different reasons. I've had to do it because I needed something, but I've also had to do it as an order. I had a band, one of their songs became chosen for a wrestling, something, I don't know, like a wrestling event or I don't know what the hell and the word fake was in the song. And the wrestling guys were like, yeah, we can't have the word fake in any songs. So I had to change the word fake to make, and I had to find an M somewhere and then A from the fake. And it was interesting,

Speaker 3 (01:07:28):

I once mixed a record where the entire quad tracked performance of the entire album was put together one note at a time. Every performance of the guitar, they literally sat there, chopped every note of every riff one note at a time and put it together. And I hit play and I looked at it. They didn't consolidate the edits when they sent it to me. And I was like, holy shit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:52):

Are

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):

You talking about one of the albums I did? Yeah, I'm not going to say what band, but this is back in the day. Back in the day,

Speaker 2 (01:07:58):

Yeah. In my experimental period. I was like, fuck it. I want to record every guitar part one note at a time and see what happens. You really fun. Know that what I'm talking about, this is way back when, and I, oh, yeah, it sounds hilarious. Even the tralo picking parts, which if your, you're Ella picking a string, you're basically striking the string like 32 times in a bar. Every single one punched in separately. It was

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):

Pretty fucking awesome to listen to because you hit play and you're like, wow, midi run through amps and stuff. It's kind of like, it was like as if the MIDI guitar performance actually sounded good. Yeah, it was an interesting one. It was like, wow. I thought I was meticulous, but holy shit. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (01:08:42):

Joey, how long did that take you?

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):

It was pretty stressful, man. It took a long time because

Speaker 4 (01:08:49):

Jesus, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):

We got to the point where we basically ended up using almost all of the recording time just on guitars, and then when we got to the end of the record, we're like, holy shit, we still got five songs to record vocals on, and you guys are only here for literally 48 more hours. So we stayed up for like 30 hours straight, just recording vocals. I don't know how the hell we did that, but that was crazy. I'm glad that my life doesn't consist of projects like that anymore.

Speaker 5 (01:09:16):

I have a buddy that did editing on one of the divine heresy records.

Speaker 3 (01:09:20):

Oh, dude, I know. I just did a project with Travis. Travis. Oh, yeah, yeah. He did the last DH record. He was the vocalist.

Speaker 5 (01:09:28):

I think it was Divine Heresy. Yeah, it must've been. But he said they actually had a di, my friend was interning with Logan at the time, so I think this would've been the first one,

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):

Tommy VAX on vocals.

Speaker 5 (01:09:38):

Yeah. He said they actually to set up a DI on Dino's guitar, not because they wanted to reamp and not really even for editing purposes, but it was so fast and there was so much speed picking that they needed to count. They had to be able to actually see on the di where the pick was hitting the string to make sure that he was hitting all the notes because it was so fast. Well, that sounds right. And then you go back and count like, oh no, you missed one. There are only seven pick hits, and there needed to be eight. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 (01:10:06):

Excellent. Sounds about right.

Speaker 5 (01:10:08):

That's an awesome story, but it sounds like a terrible time editing.

Speaker 4 (01:10:11):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):

Yeah. But you got to do what you got to do to get the song to where it needs to be. So I always preach that too. It's like, I mean, even if it seems ridiculous, if somebody sings better upside down, then fucking figure out how to hang him upside down and just do

Speaker 5 (01:10:26):

It. I worked with a singer once that was, he always said he felt uncomfortable in the studio, so we let him handhold the mic and then built a fake monitor wedge out of some cinder blocks for him to stand on. He was on stage, and then all of a sudden his vocals were great. I'm just like, all right. I guess that's how we'll do it. That's

Speaker 2 (01:10:43):

Awesome. I mean, that's the kind of shit that makes good records, and I know there's a lot of producers out there that that's kind of what they actually specialize in. They're not the tweakers and the dudes who know everything about compressors. It's the guys who know, if I throw this fucking chair at you, you're going to do the right thing. So

Speaker 5 (01:11:03):

Yeah, I think that was from what understanding Ross Robinson's one of those guys. I don't listen to Ross Robinson records because I love the sound, but the productions he gets are just, he gets a lot of hate too,

Speaker 2 (01:11:13):

Because I just read a recent interview he gave, and he spends half the interview talking about spitting on stuff. He's like, yeah, I just spit on stuff in my house. And they're like, well, what do you mean? He's like, well, people come to my house and I have this really expensive house, and I'm like this really rich guy, and I'm working with this poor band, and they think that I'm so far above them, so in order for me to get down to their level, I just spit on stuff and I'm like, man, I can't even imagine what someone's thinking when they read this article. They probably don't understand what the hell is even going on. Spit on

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):

The band's eggs for breakfast. Why

Speaker 2 (01:11:47):

Is this guys spitting on stuff?

Speaker 3 (01:11:49):

You guys sounded like shit yesterday.

Speaker 4 (01:11:51):

Why not just do it at a studio? Why not just rent a place?

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):

Well, because he says,

Speaker 4 (01:11:57):

Because that's what he wants.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):

He believes in doing the records in his house because it's more comfortable and it doesn't create this big stigma around the whole studio experience for the younger bands that haven't been in a studio before.

Speaker 4 (01:12:12):

Spend all your time spitting on stuff and then one day leave, have a hazmat crew come through.

Speaker 3 (01:12:17):

So that's the main lesson. Spit on everything, and that's the key to success.

Speaker 2 (01:12:23):

Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the show and spitting into a mic with us. I think we really appreciate it. Josh,

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):

It You could spit in my face anytime. Dude,

Speaker 5 (01:12:32):

We going to fly out to visit you just to spit in your face and fly back. It's fine. Please film it and send it to us.

Speaker 4 (01:12:38):

Spit in my dog too. My plane spit in my dog too, if you want. Or my girlfriend. I don't care. I'll

Speaker 5 (01:12:43):

Bring some of my dog spit and throw it on

Speaker 4 (01:12:45):

Your dog.

Speaker 3 (01:12:47):

It works for me. Amazing. Well, thank you for having me on. I appreciate

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):

It. Yeah, thanks for coming on, man.

Speaker 1 (01:12:57):

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