Machine: Producing Lamb of God, “Street Smart” Production, and From Hip-Hop to King Crimson

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast, brought to you by Bala ga Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala GE Guitar strives. To bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs, go to bala ga guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info. And now

Speaker 2 (00:00:31):

Your

Speaker 1 (00:00:31):

Host,

Speaker 2 (00:00:32):

Eyal Levi. Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast.

Speaker 3 (00:00:37):

Thanks, man.

Speaker 2 (00:00:38):

Thank you for being here. I am, Al Levy with me is one of my production heroes Machine. Welcome. Thank you dude. So sweet. Well, I'm just being honest and I'm sure you know who he is in case you don't, you should just look him up A machine. The producer has done legendary records for years now with bands like Lama God, suicide, silence, clutch, mindless. I mean, the list just goes on and on and on. I could sit here for a long time and read it. Crow Bot Fallout Boy, I mean, it's a long list, so thank you for taking the time to talk to me and I've been looking forward to this.

Speaker 3 (00:01:25):

You got it. It's good for me to do this, dude, because I'm not big. I think there's a little mystery here and there around me because there is, I'm not one who's big on blogging or going in chat rooms and I have a social media retardation fear. It's tough for me to do that. I'm much happier just working, doing the work in the studio and it's so important. So thank you for having me on here because this is a big avenue to connect out there in the digital world.

Speaker 2 (00:02:04):

You definitely have been a mystery to me for a long time, and I know to a lot of people in the community, you've always been one of those producers that people heard about and listened to and loved their work, but it was very, very hard to find anything about you, aside from maybe an article here

Speaker 3 (00:02:25):

Or

Speaker 2 (00:02:25):

An article there spread out over the years. But all in all, it's been very hard to track stuff down. So I know that I've got a lot of questions that have been building up over the years as well as our listeners do. But I wanted to ask you about something. I read somewhere that your parents are classical musicians. Is this true?

Speaker 3 (00:02:46):

Oh yeah. Don't really Big time. Well, my dad passed away recently, but sorry to hear that. It's all good, man. Yeah, my dad was a clarinettist in the New York Philharmonic.

Speaker 2 (00:02:58):

Wow. My dad's a conductor.

Speaker 3 (00:03:00):

I knew that about you too. That's major.

Speaker 2 (00:03:03):

Maybe they met each other at some point,

Speaker 3 (00:03:05):

Probably. Then my mom as well, they're both clarinetists. My mom, she would fill in, do big fill-ins and orchestras and taught at Julliard and Manhattan School of Music and certain high schools. And yeah, I was definitely grew up all around classical music and I chose the dark side. I chose the dark side of rock and roll. My parents, my parents even missed The Beatles because I'm older and they're older. So my form of rebellion was being into pop music, rock music, heavy music, and it's great. I've got this great classical and progressive music, DNA programmed from biology and nurturing in my household, but I chose the route of my heroes like Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix, and never rebelled by never learning to read music or never knowing theory and just forcing use of my ears and listening and feeling it. And I'm not recommending that to your audience, but that was my form of rebellion.

Speaker 2 (00:04:20):

Were you inundated in classical music, though, from the time you were a kid? Not by choice, just by situation.

Speaker 3 (00:04:27):

By situation, yeah. My dad would be rehearsing all day. I would go to Lincoln Center, be taken backstage and see as many classical shows as I would ever want. Then there would be my mom teaching in the house. Pretty high end classical people. So just by being there.

Speaker 2 (00:04:51):

Yeah, I dunno. I feel like that's my childhood too, just going to concerts all the time, just being around musicians, practicing in the house,

Speaker 3 (00:05:02):

Everywhere

Speaker 2 (00:05:03):

You go, it's just classical music. And then at one point I was like, fuck this. I'm learning guitar.

Speaker 3 (00:05:08):

Yeah, my parents, they did not want me to get into music basically. They were just sort of like, I think they knew how hard it was as professionals to make money and be successful in music and they were just doing, and not just, they were doing classical music, which is very different than what we do because I would say to my dad, Hey dad, you're really lucky because all you have to do is be great in popular music. You have to be great. And then there has to be much more. You have to know the right people. You have to have an it factor. You have to connect. It's like when my dad auditioned for the New York Philharmonic with probably hundreds of clarinetists didn't matter if you were black, white, fat, skinny, ugly, you would go behind a curtain and all these professionals would just listen to you and they would choose the best player. And I was like, man, imagine if I just had to be great, if I could just go and learn to play music. Great. And I was like that simple. I would just practice to be great. But in our world, it's much greater than that. It's like being great isn't good enough. It's super duper a part of it, but there's a million other planets to align to be successful in popular music.

Speaker 2 (00:06:36):

I also think that in classical music, the level of great is very different than in our world. For instance, on technical skill wise on the instrument. They're almost like a Olympic athletes in the classical world. The level at which they can play or read at it comparably I think is higher. But I think you're right that there's a lot of other stuff involved in our world that has, you can't get around it. The stars have to align in a business sense and timing sense and all those things have to happen in our world. Or it doesn't matter how many hours you spend at the instrument, you won't have a chance. If you're playing the right style of music at the wrong time, you're fine. There's nothing good is going to come of it.

Speaker 3 (00:07:32):

And then there's situational luck who becomes your friends, who you hang out, connect with, and then later on in business, who often gets to get enough of the slice of the piece of the pie that those gatekeepers open up for you to be heard. Because there's so many great, we've all heard so many great bands and so many great records, like, God, this is the shit. This is going to blow up and nothing happens. And it's just because a tree falls in the woods and doesn't make a sound. What's that expression? Right? The tree falls in the woods. Exactly. Does it make a sound like Keith Richard said from the Rolling Stones, I'm not the best guitar player, the best guitar player is some dude sitting playing in some bar every night. That's probably the best blues guitar player. I'm just in the Rolling Stones, so I get heard, I'm put out there.

(00:08:28):

So it's the gatekeepers too that do that. Although we're seeing good, really good moving trends in the record industry about bands succeeding so well without record companies. And I'm blown away with that. That's a separate conversation. But I'm blown away with how well I've seen bands do now without record companies with their own social media, hiring their own label services, doing it themselves. Maybe they get a smaller billboard, you know what I mean? The record company. You sell your soul to them and maybe they give you a big billboard. You know what I'm saying? That theoretically they have, I'm a little more power to promote, but then you're not going to make any money. So it's like because of the internet and because of certain bands and also largely EDM scene and hip hop scene teaching us this. Bands are kids and bands are starting to get super wise these days like, wait a second, maybe I might not have the biggest billboard, but then I can in turn make our own this size billboard and we can make more money and we can be a real band and do this for a long time.

Speaker 2 (00:09:47):

We've got a perfect example. Recently, this guitar player I know named Jason Richardson put out a solo record without a label, just himself, good for him. Guitar Instrumental music sold 7,000 copies the first week and all on his own, which means that all that money's his. And so if you figure out $10 times 7,000 in that first week, do you know how many records he would've to sell on a label to see that kind of royalty check?

Speaker 3 (00:10:22):

Totally. And dude, if I'd done this interview with you five years ago and you had said, do you want to produce bands that aren't on a record company? I had say, no, no, I'm not looking for that. But now today I'd be like, it wouldn't be a factor. It's like Clutch, no record. They're off all that. And well, they have a record company, but it's their own record company and the only band they put out is themselves. And I've done another two records, one I'm currently in the middle of now, and another one Preco that they have chosen. They're smart, okay. They do have a booking agent and they do have a smart manager, but they have chosen no record deal. They haven't offered small deals from what, in what would be our Sumerian level, entry level type. And they look at them and their manager looks and goes, well, this is a shitty fucking deal.

(00:11:26):

So they're just like, yes, we'd love a record deal and we'll be tied in for so many records and it could squash our career. So they're just like, we're very open to a record deal, but we're just waiting till we can be offered one that makes business sense. Until then, we're selling merch, we're booking tours, we're making money, we're doing it. And it's like these bands are starting to connect like, whoa, this is common sense. And because of the internet and all these things that I didn't grow up with, the info is out there, right?

Speaker 2 (00:12:02):

It's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 3 (00:12:03):

Yeah. Interview kooky heads call themselves machine and going to spill out all the goods and info you get to go check that out.

Speaker 2 (00:12:12):

The thing about the goods and info is you still got to put in the work so you can listen to interviews all day long, but

Speaker 3 (00:12:20):

You're

Speaker 2 (00:12:20):

Still going to need to put in your 10 to 20 years of hard work

Speaker 3 (00:12:24):

To

Speaker 2 (00:12:25):

Get good. So speaking of that, of putting in the work, when you discovered rock and roll, how long did it take for you to then discover production?

Speaker 3 (00:12:39):

Well, I discovered rock and roll of course as a child, but I was in high school when I discovered production because it's simply just because I had songs to make and record and I had an older friend, Clinton Bradley, and he had four track recording studio, then an eight track recording studio. So it was, at first it was just a way we weren't born with laptops, with garage band in them. So yeah, it was a way to, I learned I would follow him around and do anything to learn off him. And he was a very, very good friend as a way to go in there to record my own music. And what I learned right away was, is sort of even the first couple things I recorded, they sounded good. I realized that I had a natural knack for that. It's like we all have our things that we're good at and things were naturally not good at.

(00:13:46):

It was good. I connected with that and it made me like it. And then I started doing it for my friends who were in bands. And Could you more picture of what it was like? I grew up in a town called Teaneck, New Jersey, which was very mixed culturally and was almost like the birth of hip hop was there, sugar Hill Gang. And I went to high school with das Effects is like a classic old school hip hop band. And just having the eight track and a sampler. I play guitar and worshiped Eddie Van Halen and Jimi Hendrix and these great technical blues players, soulful players. And I saw the birth of hip hop. So yeah, with Clinton Studio and my one sampler and my one sequencer, which was on an Atari computer, no audio on a computer, no way. Not even close to that yet.

(00:14:49):

I could make hip hop records. So that's how I started. I started taking this opportunity. I had to work at Clinton Studio, do anything for him, anything to work there. I would start, he worked at Sam Ash and he would send me hip hop guys and I would for a hundred bucks, they would come in with a record for a sample and some lyrics written down, and I would program a hip hop beat and make a song, cut vocals, just vocals, mix it and do all that in one day. And that's a big part of my what got me started, and I met some real talent, real talent at that time that really influenced me to this day. And I do that for as well. I would do that for my friends in rock bands. Before you had libraries like Steven Slate, I would be making these libraries.

(00:15:44):

I don't have any tracks to record on. So I would take my sampler and I would put a drum set in a room and I would literally make every key group with other dynamics. I would painstakingly create these things to use to fake, which we all have these days. And for the simple fact that I only had seven tracks, of course the eighth track had to have sink empty on it. You'd have to slave all this stuff, your syns and your samplers. So yeah, was my thing. It was fun. It was so cool to be, that was cutting edge. There weren't a lot of producers that could do that. So I existed in that time as a kid doing this, and I guess I was a record producer. I didn't still really know what a record producer was, but just by pure default, I guess I was a record producer, and later I learned what a record producer is, and I just thought, well, I'll do that after my band blows up and my record producers, they're like the old guy in the studio and I was like, yeah, I could be a record producer.

(00:16:58):

I'll be that later in life. So anyway, so I was really great in the studio and a okay songwriter. So yeah, I had a band and it mixed hip hop elements and heavy guitar elements, and it did it maybe like 6, 7, 8 years prior to say Limp Bizkit and Korn. Right? So it was like way before, I just remember We Care a lot. No, was that Faith No More? There were hints and things. I run DMC would do a track with run d and c could a track with guitar on it, and it would just give me the biggest fucking boner to hear that. And I would just play my Eddie Van Halen stuff to Kiss fm, which was the Urban Station. And I just knew it. I knew it. I knew that that was going to happen, but I was way too early and record companies, I would figure out my ways through hanging out with bands and people to get to a and r People, blah, blah, blah.

(00:18:05):

Oh, side note, one of the people that I got to with machines music, it was called Machine, was an a and r guy named David Eth. He doesn't even know this. That's hilarious. He called me back, he doesn't know this. I first told him first, not that long ago. I was like, do you know that you picked out my cassette and you called me? And anyway, he's like, no, I have no idea. So this is what would happen. So they would go, whoa, this is dope. This is really interesting. We definitely don't know what to do with this. It was at a time where you could just pitch yourself to a record company and they could invest in artists. You didn't have to already have your numbers up on Facebook and YouTube. This is all before that. It was at a time where they had back catalog and you could get a deal and quit your day job from just a development.

(00:19:03):

So I would go in there and they would meet with me and they would go, my God, this is really cool. We don't really know what to do with this, but will you remix our artists because it's really cool what you're doing. We'd love to do it in a remix. I was like, so sure. So I became this guy who was putting beats like hip hop beats and stuff to heavier bands, and one of those was White Zombie. I got two white zombie remixes on what was to become this white zombie remix record called Super Sexy Swinging Sounds. And it went like multiple platinum. I bought it. Oh, nice.

Speaker 2 (00:19:41):

Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:19:42):

And that's kind of what kicked it off. I never signed up to be a record producer. It happened totally organically. I never worked in a recording studio like a traditional hard rock or rock producer as far as typical interning and engineering, I was just a record producer. Engineering came backwards, engineering came later. So I had this really at the time, very good, unique skill of being able to take bands with organic elements, sink my samples and stuff and add this production. It was a niche, it was a cool thing to do, and it was just something that not a lot of people could do. So Paul Adams, the kid, the kid who is playing manager to me when I was playing band as machine, the band, he later gets a job. He was a booking agent when we met and he wanted to manage me, and that was fun. I went to the UK and I toured and I got all that out of my system and it was miserable living in the uk, but absolutely the time of my life as far as being that young and doing a few tours and we put out

Speaker 2 (00:21:00):

How old were you at that time about

Speaker 3 (00:21:02):

With this? I would've been 25 just after school. Just after.

Speaker 2 (00:21:10):

Yeah, perfect age to do something like that

Speaker 3 (00:21:12):

Just after college. Yeah. Anyway, yeah. So to make a long story short, so Paul now works at a producer management firm, a small one, and Richard Branson gets his record company back. He sold Virgin Records and he gets his record company back after five years of not being allowed to participate in the record industry. It starts up V two, so it's a new major label. And their second signing was a band that was kind of like Beck, in other words. So it was this really talented kid. He wrote these great songs on his four track. It was one kid. He hadn't put the band together yet, but it was meant to be like a beck mentality with beats and loops and cool sounds and lots of sampling around these great songs with guitar and all this. So it comes into Paul's office where they managed producers and they were seeking a producer for this, and they didn't really have anyone to do this.

(00:22:13):

And Paul was like, Hey, listen, there's this kid from Jersey machine, he would kill this. We don't rep him, but we don't have anyone. Give him a call, hook it up. So they flew the three guys. There was the band, now they flew the three guys out to New Jersey. I did three tracks. I was immediately asked to produce the record, and I just stepped into a major label record and I was like, wow. I'm like, I'm young. I thought I was supposed to do this when I was an old guy, and I sat on it for a second, should I do this or should I continue trying to do my own music? Which was just too early. And I'm really, really happy I made that

Speaker 2 (00:23:00):

Choice that your music was too early at the time. Could you feel it?

Speaker 3 (00:23:06):

No, I just felt like I was doing the right thing for the moment. I knew it was coming. I knew the storm was coming. Duh. I mean, fucking duh, right? I mean hip hop guitars, and now it's even back even more than ever. If we're looking at scene bands now, it's like we're not going to call it rap rock. That's not cool. But it's even now up to the minute, it was huge. It was gone. And now we're seeing elements back in heavy music and all kinds of music. All kinds of music like mixing guitars and hip hop stuff. Duh.

Speaker 2 (00:23:47):

It's such an obvious combination, but I can imagine that in 1992 or three or four, you would've fell a little bit like a fish out of water trying to do that stuff.

Speaker 3 (00:24:01):

But there was pretty hate machine from nine-ish nails. Okay. And I was sort of machines music, which by the way, doesn't exist on the internet, thank God. Now I'm curious, only will Putney hides a copy from me of the actual machine music.

Speaker 2 (00:24:23):

So he's got it.

Speaker 3 (00:24:25):

I didn't say that. Did I just say that? That's a fucking edit. No, I'm just kidding. You have to edit that. Yeah, he does. He's keeping it from me. He found a video of me with a song he's holding hostage from me.

Speaker 2 (00:24:43):

Ransom

Speaker 3 (00:24:44):

Blackmail. But anyway, what was the point of all this, Al?

Speaker 2 (00:24:52):

Well, we were talking about how you moved into working with bands and the decision to drop your own music because you felt like pursuing production was right, and I was just wondering if

Speaker 3 (00:25:08):

You

Speaker 2 (00:25:08):

Felt like a fish out of water or anything like that back in those days.

Speaker 3 (00:25:14):

No, because I was doing the same thing I did every day, but I'm the original DIY guy. I didn't traditionally start all the other, most of the other rock producers by maybe interning in a studio engineering. I was the original back in the day, DIY guy making records, hip hop records, rock records, and I didn't know engineering. I was just making records and using my ears, and it's just to answer your question, it's what I did every day. And then one day it came with a paycheck and a title, like now I'm a record producer, and that was it. So the only difference is, is that then I had to be thrusted into very expensive studios because back then the major labels, you had to be in a big expensive studio and you had to be making your band broke in order for a major label to think a rock record was of any value, you had to spend money on it.

(00:26:19):

So I was then thrusted into these big rooms, and I've been to so many of them now all over the world of your classic ocean ways and since it sounds and so on and so on and so on, and so, so on and so on. You had to do that. So what they would do with me at first is they would just give me, I would go to a big studio and they would just give me the best house engineer of that big studio to have my back micing everything up, and I would be there.

Speaker 2 (00:26:53):

So you'd just be like, we need drums. Go mic.

Speaker 3 (00:26:56):

Yeah, and I had ideas and I, because I'd limited gear before this as far as tracking band gear, right? I just had what I had from Clinton's studio, so I had ideas and I was a bit of a control freak then too. So I would insist, no, let's try this, let's try that. But then I slowly in reverse really started learning about engineering and now very, very interested and passionate on the engineering side as well. All these first records, all these, I never even took an engineering credit. I did engineer, but I thought it wasn't right to or smart to. I thought, no, no, no, no. I'm the creative guy. It's produced and mixed by machine. Even though I was engineering all these records, I wouldn't take an engineering credit. I do now because a very different scene. We all own our own studios now, and I am very into engineering and I've learned a lot more and I've become quite the scientist, a physicist of recording and engineering and gear.

Speaker 2 (00:28:05):

I see. Did you not take the credit because you felt like you weren't experienced enough as an engineer or

Speaker 3 (00:28:12):

You

Speaker 2 (00:28:13):

Weren't, didn't engineer enough on those records to weren't a credit?

Speaker 3 (00:28:18):

No, I just thought it wasn't right. I thought it wasn't cool. I thought it was like, no, no, no, I'm the producer and I'm not the engineer guy. I didn't start as an engineer. I wasn't an experienced engineer. I would get mixes from huge engineers. No, that's not what I signed up for. That's not what I was doing originally. I was just working. I was the original, the original DIY guy that just had what he had, and I didn't think it was important. I thought what was important was to have more creative credits and not cloud. It just produced and mixed. And that, you know what it was is I would never have wanted to be asked to be hired for a job as an engineer, wouldn't have wanted it. I would've only wanted the job I started as a record producer. Got it. And if I figured if I put the engineering credit, someone might hire me a job as an engineer and I wouldn't want that job.

(00:29:24):

I would want to be, I want to be the director, the coach, the producer, the guy directing the talent. That was my, and it's always been my biggest asset, biggest asset to bans. And even to date, we could nerd the fuck out about engineering me and you, I'm sure if we wanted to. But let me just say even to date, I really feel like engineering has a price tag. There's so many talented engineers that got there, but the guy who makes records, better records, the guy who makes players better players, the guy who makes artists better artists, the guy who makes songs better, songs, that's the producer guy. And that I feel like that's hard to put a price tag on. That's kind of like the priceless stuff.

Speaker 2 (00:30:17):

I completely agree

Speaker 3 (00:30:18):

For Hey dudes, for good message, good message for everyone. Even listening to this gear is awesome. Learn to use it real well. Don't overdo it.

Speaker 2 (00:30:32):

Cut off,

Speaker 3 (00:30:33):

Right, right. Yeah. Gear is important and we could talk about gear for hours I'm sure, but a message someone to anyone trying to cut their teeth in this, the worst thing you could do is don't buy too much gear when you're trying to make something new. Take your time, get something, learn it, make it your bitch. Learn it like a horse so you don't have to think about it so you can concentrate on music. I've made all my biggest, I've made a lot of mistakes, getting too much gear too soon. And honestly, a lot of guys get hung up on this. They may think they need the new gear and this and that. And I can tell you that has nothing to do with selling records. I look back years ago to some of my productions where I had way less plugins or gear and it has nothing to do with, they still sound as dope and it has nothing to do with their success. So it's like it will make a difference in your life, trust me. You need to find a way to stay on the music and stay on figuring out ways to make bands connect with other people through music and energy. And the smartest thing you could do is learn the shit out of what gear you have and your ability to tweak it fast and use it fast and not think about it will actually probably in turn, maybe even make you dial it better.

Speaker 2 (00:32:12):

Did you ever have that? I guess it feels natural almost to be like, oh, I need that piece of gear because that's going to make the difference. Have you ever had that instinct and then just told it to shut the hell up?

Speaker 3 (00:32:27):

I think that is a personality issue, what you're talking about, because I don't have that personality issue in other words, but I think there's a lot of people that do what we do, and they do have that. Then all the companies are brainwashing you to think that that's their job. All the companies, all the new people putting out new plugs, new compressors, new drum heads, new guitar strings, their job is to make you think that this latest, greatest oil coated drum head is going to do the next greatest thing, or this microphone that combines this and that is the next thing. This drum

Speaker 2 (00:33:06):

Head is going to play

Speaker 3 (00:33:07):

Itself. Yeah, it's their job to do that. They need to put out new product and yeah, it's mostly bullshit. I look back now, I'm very lucky. I'm experienced. It's been like 20, 25 years. And I look back and I can think that there's, in my lifetime, there's only been a few pieces of gear that changed things that stuck around and changed things. And I lean when it comes to drum ed choices or mics for drums, I lean on the ones that have been test proven throughout the decades, and I put all my creative energy into post. I'm really into I keeping it what works. Fucking four 20 ones on Toms and 57 on a snare make it what it works going in the Sound of Rock and it's stuck around for a reason. And then my new school creativity is post. It's like plugins and the new ways that you can destroy audio in the digital domain. That's kind of cool. Save your

Speaker 2 (00:34:19):

Money. I completely agree. Are there any pieces that you feel are worth the investment in? I seem to remember you told me that you really like stressors.

Speaker 3 (00:34:29):

Yeah, no, when we first hooked up and we chatted, we were saying like, okay, so what really came out of my lifetime that's going to stick around for history, I could tell you. One is I saw the distress come out and that's not going anywhere. There's so few things we can mention, you know what I mean? That are going to stick around.

Speaker 2 (00:34:53):

Songs are what actually stick

Speaker 3 (00:34:55):

Around. Yeah, dude. Hello. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Speaker 2 (00:35:00):

Yeah. And regardless of the recording quality too. Yeah, I mean obviously I like things to sound good, but a great song trumps everything in my opinion. And I think in the public's opinion too.

Speaker 3 (00:35:13):

Yeah, absolutely. On a nerd sense, my absolutely best sounding productions are certainly not necessarily my biggest selling records. Hell no.

Speaker 2 (00:35:22):

Do you think that there's a correlation there or

Speaker 3 (00:35:25):

No? No, there's not a correlation. There's just the fact that in the big picture, the regular people, the people we're just a little segment, people like me and you we're just a little segment of the world that are into production and into

Speaker 2 (00:35:42):

That tiny, tiny

Speaker 3 (00:35:43):

Segment. Tiny, it's minuscule. It's like a minuscule thing. And then the rest of the world, they're into music, not for its production value. They're into music because they're being sold feeling energy and emotion and a lyric. It's a physical, mental, spiritual thing, and your average dude's not paying attention. Perfect example is, I've actually never said this publicly, but I always, my, every time I die record cut a phenomenon. I'm like, today still kind of really bummed on the guitar sounds. But Keith goes, Hey girls, I'm a cunt. And it sold the record and I was like, Hey Keith, this is so important. We got to do this. We got to break the band down, blah, blah, blah. And I think that's the biggest, I'm pretty sure that's the biggest selling. Every time I die record the songs were good and I pushed them to be the better every time I die. And I don't love those guitar sounds, to be honest.

Speaker 2 (00:36:50):

There was this band called Job for a Cowboy.

Speaker 3 (00:36:53):

I know them. I have another story about those guys too, actually.

Speaker 2 (00:36:57):

I'm curious to hear it. But I remember that what sold them originally was a scream. And it was a scream that they took off of a sample, I think from a cartoon or a movie. Oh

Speaker 3 (00:37:08):

Wow. That

Speaker 2 (00:37:09):

The song stops and then it's a high pitch scream and then the song comes back in.

Speaker 3 (00:37:14):

Weren't they also the band that was putting their death metal to the Simpsons cartoons or something on YouTube, weren't they the band doing that,

Speaker 2 (00:37:22):

I think? Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (00:37:23):

And that was giving them a lot of

Speaker 2 (00:37:25):

Yes. Yeah, they did that and they had the scream and that was what sold them. It wasn't all this other stuff that engineers care about. And actually as they got better, they became a better band, got better production, their sales went down.

Speaker 3 (00:37:42):

No shit. I could tell you my job for a cowboy story if you want. Let's hear it. So Will's Putney, he's now my engineer

Speaker 2 (00:37:51):

Now, meaning back then

Speaker 3 (00:37:52):

At this point, yeah, at this point. And Will Loves Me because Lamb of God and all that, and Will's like Machine, listen, there's this new, it was like West Coast Death Metal, which I was completely unaware of, honestly, which will knew everything about it was starting to connect and in the scene it was going to become a big thing. And there was two bands. It was suicide, silence and Job for a Cowboy. And Will was just gagging for me to reach out to these bands and produce them. So I was like, awesome, let's have them in. So we had one day in the studio where I invited Job for a Cowboy Down and we micd up and we jammed and we recorded some demos. And then I did the same thing with Suicide Silence with Rest in Peace with Mitch, the original singer.

Speaker 2 (00:38:48):

And

Speaker 3 (00:38:49):

There was just no contest, like suicide Silence was to me, such a better band job for Cowboy Couldn't Nice guys. I just thought they couldn't get out of their own way. They were so hung up on being so technical and so Mel to a default and here comes suicide silence and they're just chill and smoke weed. And then here comes Mitch and he's a star and they genuinely, you could tell they want to be a big band, and it was easy choice. So Will and I did that. No Time to Plead Suicide. Sounds Record as a result of that.

Speaker 2 (00:39:33):

It's my favorite one by the way.

Speaker 3 (00:39:34):

Oh, thanks man. Yeah, that was me figuring out Death Metal.

Speaker 2 (00:39:42):

You know what I thought the problem with Chafer Cowboy was, and I've told them this so I'm not,

Speaker 3 (00:39:47):

Okay, fair

Speaker 2 (00:39:48):

Enough. I'm not afraid. Is that because my band toured with them a lot in those early days and they were like 17 years old and they so badly wanted to be accepted by the technical bands

Speaker 3 (00:40:03):

That

Speaker 2 (00:40:04):

They changed their sound so that they could not be the teenage cartoon band

Speaker 3 (00:40:11):

Because

Speaker 2 (00:40:13):

They felt really uncomfortable about that for whatever reason. Because back then they were getting put on tours with Behemoth and go Jira and bands like serious, serious bands. I think even Lamb of God at some Point. So serious metal bands. And then there are these kids that got big on MySpace because of a cartoon and a scream,

Speaker 3 (00:40:37):

And

Speaker 2 (00:40:37):

They felt really insecure about it. So they kept trying to make themselves be more brutal, more technical, heavier, faster, all that stuff. And what they got famous for kind of just went by the wayside. Whereas I think suicide silence just refined it more and more and more. Like their song stayed simple, catchy pulverizing.

Speaker 3 (00:41:02):

Well said. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (00:41:04):

Yeah, that's my take on that whole situation. So can we talk about Will for a moment? Yeah, our audience loves Will. I've known Will for years, and he's definitely,

Speaker 3 (00:41:17):

Will's mys my first intern

Speaker 2 (00:41:20):

And he's made quite the name for himself. So I think that it's very interesting that you didn't come up through the traditional studio system where interns become engineers and come up under somebody, and then eventually if they come up under the right person, they get taught the right things and then become, eventually they go their own way. That's kind of the birth life cycle of a producer coming up, right? In the traditional sense. But you didn't come up that way.

Speaker 3 (00:41:54):

I didn't. And I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to kids thinking to get into this, but I did. Not necessarily if that's where your heart is. But if you want to be in heavy music, which first, I wouldn't necessarily recommend that, but I love, love and I'm so proud that I got to do that. I got to be that producer for other people like Zach Serini and Will Putney, Josh Wilber, I

Speaker 2 (00:42:26):

Didn't know that you were behind those guys too, man. You've got a track record for spitting out some achieved guys.

Speaker 3 (00:42:34):

Thank you. I'm proud of that. And every time I hear about their successes, you be, it really makes me really feel chuffed. I'm really happy for, I'm really, it makes me happy as well as they must of course be happy. So I appreciate people that come around to help me out very, very much. I don't haze them or do horrible things like stories I hear.

Speaker 2 (00:43:00):

So, alright, so let me ask you something then, because those are three guys that are among the best of the best right now. Will is in his own, one of the best of the best for Extreme Metal. Josh is best of the best for the more commercial metal stuff, and he's just amazing. And Zach has been doing stuff like Blink 180 2. So the three of them are just top of their game. What sets them apart? Did they have anything in common that set them apart from a lot of the other guys?

Speaker 3 (00:43:37):

Oh yes, they did. Let's

Speaker 2 (00:43:39):

Talk about that.

Speaker 3 (00:43:40):

You can tell it when a kid walks in the room in minutes. Absolutely. They had it. You have to want to be in the studio. That was me as a kid, you know what I mean? It's like you can't be too much of a cool kid, just a little nerdom. That's really important. And it's a combination of your biological DNA of how well you hear music and understand music and your drive to want to just do it all the time to want to be there. That was me as a kid. I thought it was really cool for me when it was like Joey or Tony or whoever, Nat was like, Hey dude, we're going out, we're doing this. And I would say, Hey, hey man, no, I'm actually, I'm in the studio tonight. I thought that was cool. I liked saying that. I felt, wow, that was a big deal. To even be, first of all, to get in a studio was hard. Again, we weren't born with studios in our laptops. So

Speaker 2 (00:44:45):

Yes,

Speaker 3 (00:44:46):

And that's what all these guys have. They have, they're unstoppable. You can just tell it's a rare brain type to do what we do. And you find in people, it's great. It's rare because you sort of have to be very math and technical oriented and yet at the same time there's another side of your brain to be really successful, you have to be creative. And then there's a third thing, which is extremely important. And you have to be this kind of people, person, politician type of personality to make people great, to bring the most out of the people you're working with. And that's a rare breed. That's like a hard brain type to find. Some people have two with a three and they still do well, but

Speaker 2 (00:45:37):

I guess when you get all three lined up, then get out of the way. Did you have other interns and engineers who weren't quite as

Speaker 3 (00:45:48):

Tons?

Speaker 2 (00:45:49):

Okay, so these guys stuck out out of a whole group of people.

Speaker 3 (00:45:55):

Oh yeah. Zach Sini walked in. He was in high school still.

Speaker 2 (00:45:59):

Yeah, he's a younger man.

Speaker 3 (00:46:01):

He came into the machine shop, he was in high school still and 10 minutes. I was like, could you just come around and hang out here? We just talked about music, saw stuff that he, he'd done records and I was like, I train spotted that kid in a millisecond. I was like, and I was like, he is a good boy and he's a good son. He is a good boy. And he went to school. I was trying to get him to drop out of school and stay at the machine job. And then he really wanted to, he had big sights for himself. And that's also the belief. This was great about Zach and you have to believe in yourself too in this industry. And he really wanted to do, after he had done a good amount of stuff with us, he wanted to do the West Coast thing and I worked with John Feldman. There's stuff I'd had done Four Years Strong. We had done that record both together and we had the same management for a while, crushed management. And he mentioned Feldy to me. So I called Feldy personally for him and said, John, you want this kid? I'm sure you get a lot of interns. And they're knowing, just trust me, Zach's coming town you want.

(00:47:21):

And that was that. And he never left. And they're just killing it. Yes, they are killing it.

Speaker 2 (00:47:28):

Damn. What about Josh Wilbur? I mean, he's killing it too.

Speaker 3 (00:47:32):

Josh Wilbur was not an intern. Josh Wilbur was hired as an editor engineer by me on the first Lamb of God record. No, no Sacrament, second Lamb of God record. And then I wound up using Josh to help me track and engineer records a number of times post that. And then Josh soon there just became so badass. He was just doing his own producing gigs. But no, but Josh did not start as my intern. He was just hired,

Speaker 2 (00:48:07):

Dude, he's incredible.

Speaker 3 (00:48:08):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:48:09):

I remember for years when people would say who their favorite metal mixers were, I'd say Josh Wilber and people would be like, who? Now everybody knows. But I think he's gotten really popular in the past year, year and a half. But for the longest time he was like this secret badass that kind of was doing big records but flew under the radar I think in terms of people's consciousness that he existed. Lemme

Speaker 3 (00:48:38):

Ask you an important question, which is I need to know for myself, he fly under the radar because he wasn't big on social media or did he fly under the radar for some other reason?

Speaker 2 (00:48:48):

No, I think that that's a big part of it because he would do a record by a gaira, which everybody loves, and a lot of the producer kids would be like, that Gaira record is the shit. But I feel like Josh is not really into social media or talking about his production

Speaker 3 (00:49:10):

In

Speaker 2 (00:49:11):

Public and which I know because I've tried to get him to come on this podcast and

Speaker 3 (00:49:14):

Stuff

Speaker 2 (00:49:15):

And he's turned me down multiple times. I'm still going to keep on trying though. Good. Because I think at one point he'll finally say yes. But I think that, yeah, so I think it took a number of records in a row where people, because if you see his name once on Gaira, but then you don't hear about him much after that and he's not promoting himself

Speaker 3 (00:49:41):

Or he's doing other genres. He's doing a pop record or he is doing this, which is what I always aim to do myself. So there's like he's falling off this scene's radar and so on and so forth in that,

Speaker 2 (00:49:55):

I think it takes multiple records that are successful in a succession for people to really notice or active social media or a combination of the two. But if you're not doing social media and you're not sticking in one genre, people's attention spans are just not great. Not great these days, but I think because, well, he's did Trivium and Mega Death and all that Remains and Corn and just so

Speaker 3 (00:50:23):

I think Five Finger Death Punch too is in there now.

Speaker 2 (00:50:25):

Oh wow. So yeah, so many records in a row. I think that now people just know that he's the shit.

Speaker 3 (00:50:34):

Yeah, he certainly is.

Speaker 2 (00:50:36):

And what was the story with him? You got him as an intern?

Speaker 3 (00:50:41):

Yeah, I got him as he was my first intern. Talk about conviction Will was at Stevens Institute. I was in Weehawken by the syndicate was where my studios were. Will was attending Stevens Institute, very prestigious engineering school and took some audio classes, some he didn't really, he was very green when he came to me and this motherfucker, he had two credits left to get something like two credits left to get a physics. I forgot what I got to ask him what it was. It was like a bioengineering degree, something that's nearly impossible to get two credits away and meets me. And I offer him an intern and leaves that behind. He could have finished it. He just stopped and just hung out with me every day, all day and soaked up everything I had to give him to date. I don't think he got his degree and he is not going to need it. He's going to be just fine.

Speaker 2 (00:51:50):

I think he's done all right.

Speaker 3 (00:51:50):

Yeah. Hey, do you know that will just put out this guitar Tone producer Kemper Bundle.

Speaker 2 (00:51:58):

I know that it was about to come out.

Speaker 3 (00:52:01):

Yeah, I want to plug it for him. I do want to plug it for him. It's on STL tones and I kind of taught this guy how to fucking record a guitar, and now he's certainly taking it further on and he's a guitar tone wizard, and this pack is going to be amazing sounding. So definitely if you're not like me and have a history of buying tons of amps and it's smart for you to have a Kemper, you can have all that in one spot. And as much as I absolutely hate Kempers and Ax Effects, I only hate them because they're actually really good. It was really fun and cool to on guitar plugins because I could beat those every time with micing up paper. You know what I mean? Getting to have a micing up paper. I was like, yeah. But yeah, these are getting really good. So if you're smart and you're not going to buy all these amps and you're going to buy a Kemp or Ax Effects, these will be unbelievable tones and an unbelievable package of Just Badass. I'm sure

Speaker 2 (00:53:15):

I'm sure of it too. Yeah. STL tones. And I know that lots of guys in our community have been talking about it. They're looking forward to it. Good.

Speaker 3 (00:53:25):

Yeah. Now I'm going to have to buy a fucking Kemper. You don't have one. I'm holding off. I'm holding off. So this is what I've been doing. So this is what I've been doing when I dial up. First of all, remember this to you, a lot of my bands now have a thing about it. Clutch bands like that, or Crow Robot, they're real traditionalists. So for a different band, they would be all good. So that's one reason I wouldn't use it a lot. But what I have been doing is when I dial these great sounds, I like borrow my friend's Kemper, and I've been modeling them. So when the day comes that I have it, I've got some of my tones ready to go. But no, I haven't bought one yet, but I certainly will. I'll certainly buckle down,

Speaker 2 (00:54:13):

Buy one my day. I got to tell you, man, I feel like Kemper is one of those pieces of gear like we were talking about earlier, that

Speaker 3 (00:54:21):

Oh, I was going to stand the test of time.

Speaker 2 (00:54:23):

Yeah. Oh yeah, I think so. It changed the game for me when I got it, because I also had tons of amps and I was at a studio that had tons and tons of amps, and I definitely at that time thought that amps were better. Now I think that the modelers are

Speaker 3 (00:54:41):

Good

Speaker 2 (00:54:41):

Enough to where you can use whichever, you can go whichever way and get great tones.

Speaker 3 (00:54:47):

What we said about the stressor or certain gear, I don't know if the the aspects will stand the test of time, but that concept, that guitar modeling box concept absolutely will stand the test of time. Absolutely. People aren't going to go back to collecting expensive amps as much. And as I say, miking up paper.

Speaker 2 (00:55:10):

And then just the idea of being able to, you get an amazing tone on a record and you can model it. That's just, it's not fair. Incredible. That's incredible.

Speaker 3 (00:55:21):

It's not fair.

Speaker 2 (00:55:22):

I know. It is amazing how much things have changed, right?

Speaker 3 (00:55:28):

Yeah. We are, God, we're in such a period of massive change in our whole industry, both technologically and in business, like we mentioned earlier in this conversation about bands learning to choose no label. And then on the tech front, what I've seen in the last four or five years in plugins is mind blowing these emulation plugins. And it's mind blowing. I never would think to mix in the box previous to what's happened in plugins in the last four or five years. Never. And now I'm there, man, I made it.

Speaker 2 (00:56:18):

You're mixing in the box.

Speaker 3 (00:56:19):

All the money is invested in analog gear for the way in, and then it's in, and it's all stays in and the money's invested in plugins. I was like one of the original hybrid mixers when you didn't have to go to a big studio or mix or make the band broke and mix on an SSL or whatever, or Neve. I was one of the original hybrid mixers. I figured out I'm a real scientist by nature. I figured out really early on, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. What's the problem with it? Yeah, mixing the box. I tried it really, really early on, probably even in 16 bit. It's like, oh yeah, well, it's the summing blah, blah. And I figured out really, really early on that if I went out in stems and went through a really cool analog swimming mixer, I could trick it.

(00:57:08):

I could make it really analog. And I did that forever. I did that really, really early on before there were many, many products that were invented for this purpose. I did it with a Manly 16 channel tube mixer. Wow. So many huge records were mixed on that. Through that, through stems through it would've been eight stereo stems. And I graduated from there and did much more tricky things with hybrid mixing since, but that's where it started. I went away from the tube mixer and then learned why I like transformers over tubes or amps, or we're getting really nerdy right now. That's all right. Yeah. I learned that. I learned that I like me transformer,

Speaker 2 (00:58:00):

But now you're in the box.

Speaker 3 (00:58:01):

No, now I invest all my money on transformers and mics and gear for the way in, right? I've got the barn, which is this beautiful, epic, big, amazing recording room, tracking room, and nothing on outboard gear, summing gear on a mix chain, all that stuff. No more investing there, by the way. It's good now. Right? But dude, what's the theory of evolution, right? Honestly, what's the theory of It was like there was some dude swinging a jackhammer, breaking rocks, and then swinging a pick, breaking rocks, and the jackhammer came out and come on it beat the fucking dude who was swinging the hammer. So it's like, it's good now and then look what's happened in five years, what's going to happen in another five years? And now I'm just thinking, I just don't want to be behind the curve. I don't want to be behind the ball. So even if it's debatable, now I'm in because I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be that old guy that's behind the ball when it's better. Because the theory of evolution, technological evolution tells us it will actually become better. Of

Speaker 2 (00:59:10):

Course. I mean, there's no way around it. It's almost there now. So speaking of the barn, I remember when I heard that you were moving there. You were leaving the Northeast and going to Texas, and I was actually surprised. Someone told me that you were retiring from production, which then I realized, yeah, that's never, well, see, that's the thing. People, you were an enigma to lots of people. That rumor went around and obviously it was untrue. And then people were like, he's just starting his studio back up in Texas, and Will is staying in New Jersey.

Speaker 3 (00:59:52):

The machine shop at the time was then deeded over to Will.

Speaker 2 (00:59:56):

What inspired you to move?

Speaker 3 (00:59:58):

A lot of things. A lot of things. It's just tough. It is hard living on the East Coast, and we always wanted to move someplace where it was warmer and it was a thriving music place. I mean, I moved to Austin, Texas, so come on. Just

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):

A great scene.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):

What would've been the obvious choices? It would've been California. And that doesn't work for me. We don't have to talk about why or Nashville. I'm not really that country. It's getting better. There's cool alt rock coming out of Nashville, but nah. And then there's Austin, Texas, which is a thriving great community that prides themselves on live music majorly. And every time I went to Austin, and it wasn't for South by Southwest, I mean, I would go there to work or whatever. I produced part of the King Crimson record in Austin. That was the first time I went to Austin. It felt like the coolest place, and it was more affordable and I could do this thing. So in other words, as adapting, my way of adapting to the changing record industry is as the budgets weren't there to rent big studios and you had to, it was all ins and this and that.

(01:01:15):

First I went from these cool overdub spaces in Wee Hawking, and that's like the original machine shop that you've seen on early videos. And then I was going out and paying for drum rooms and that worked. And then that wasn't working. So I was like, well, that shouldn't even be playing for German, so I need a good, so at that point, I needed to have a place, and I had Will, and he was starting to do his own records. So I created this thing that I called my tattoo shop where it's like a tattoo shop is like, so it's machines tattoo shop, but there are other chairs and other tattoo artists have chairs, and they rent chairs and they work out of that tattoo shop. So that was the idea. So we found this place in Belleville that had this central, great ambient, incredible drum room, and with these satellite offices that were control rooms, and I could have a room will, could have a room, Jake could have a room, and so on and so forth.

(01:02:16):

So that's how that all came about. And now that moving on, you're asking about the barn. We wanted to move and I didn't want to do, it was really important for me to not do what the trend was very big in California, which is maybe build something off your house or do something in a room. And I don't know, man, maybe this is just young kids in bands, don't know the difference. But it's important to me and the feeling that I had growing up, going to these amazing big studios, and I call it the rock and Roll fantasy. It's like I've always said that. I always tell this to everyone. Will Zach, everyone that we're working is like, go and record. A record Shouldn't feel like you're going to your mom's house. It shouldn't feel like your house. It should be a space that feels great and you can do anything.

(01:03:13):

And it's just an epic place. Sounds good in there. A band can all play together and it feels right. And so I took all the knowledge that I had from going to these big studios and I was, instead of going into a commercial space and making it work for the first time, I had the opportunity to make from ground up, build my own building. And it was inspired by a barn design, by having great experiences back in the day, going to famous barn studios like Bearsville or Longview Farms in Wells where Led Zeppelin was recorded and the Queen. And I always thought, this barn studio thing is cool. It feels really good to be in a barn and it's cheap. Building a barn is a simple build, a simple structure, and it works for the way I work. I work all in the same room also with the band. I don't like separation. I don't have a separate control room. Everyone who's worked with me knows that's my style. So yeah, dude, I could sell my house in New Jersey and I bought eight acres. It's a 30 outside of downtown Austin. I bought eight acres. You know how big that is? That's like six football fields with their end zones put together. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):

That's quite sizable. I had three acres in Florida, a studio I had, and that was Big Eight is just, yeah, talk about isolation.

Speaker 3 (01:04:46):

I could sell my house and for the profit of that, I could buy this acreage and build this barn debt-free in cash and I could provide this thing I call the rock and roll fantasy and it's paid for. I'm not paying rent, I'm not doing this. And that was my smart business entrepreneurial idea of how to keep existing and doing what I want to do every day, which is make records for, and it makes sense within the ever-changing budgets and still giving that rock and roll fantasy that's so important to making a record man the feeling of good energy and good vibes, putting bands into places where they're not afraid and it's exciting to be in every day. That's a secret weapon to making great records.

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):

Now, do you live on that property too

Speaker 3 (01:05:45):

Anymore? I did at first and then there's some personal things, personal family things, and I'm back where I'm talking to you from now in another sort of overdub mixed room in Asbury Park, New Jersey. This is where I grew up in Jersey. I'm here for now and doing things and it's important for family. So going on tour, when there's a full band to record, we fly out to the barn and track it. And I mix out of this place, and I'll do maybe for every gig I get, maybe two out of three of them are mixed gigs and one in three is producing recording mixed gig. So I'm here most of the time and then I've got my guys, my new Will Putney's of the world that are stoked. They get to use the barn and I want them to use the barn when I'm not there.

Speaker 2 (01:06:37):

That's actually kind of like my situation. I've got a studio in Florida with a no kidding producer named Andrew Wade. It's a big facility, basically. It's me, Andrew, and his band called A Data Remember? And it's just I heard of them. Yeah, well, he's produced them and so

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):

That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):

He's produced most of their records and so it's like their singer and Andrew started the studio and I've got a few rooms in there and I don't live in Florida. I live in Atlanta. I used to have a studio in Florida, which I sold, and then I moved over to this place with Andrew, but it's like a big facility. It's like 6,000 square feet. So Andrew's got a few rooms, I've got a few rooms and then a data, remember has their own area of it. I just go down there when there's stuff to do and then I leave because at my old studio in Florida, the one

Speaker 3 (01:07:34):

And you're focused when you're down there and

Speaker 2 (01:07:36):

Exactly. Well, my old studio, the one that was on the three acre lot was in my house. The studio was in my house and the band stayed there. And man, it made me so miserable. And these were good bands too. I was working on a lot of good bands that sold records and everything. And so career wise it was very good. But the living situation made me miserable. It just made me miserable to not be able to leave my work environment and to always be around the bands. And it made me resent my situation somewhat, which is funny because a lot of people would kill for that situation, but I think that being able to go home is a big deal. It helps your focus so much.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):

I kind of just knew that I have a natural, natural ability. I kind of just knew that all along before ever trying to do something in a house. I said earlier too, we all have our sort of natural strengths and natural weaknesses, right? No one's like Mr. Perfect in every way, and I sort of, I don't do a lot of social media. I don't do a lot of reading. I'm pretty highly dyslexic and it's tiring and it's not fun and it's not entertaining and I don't do a lot of that. But I've been blessed with this street smarts growing up, being in the special class and it was not a good time. I don't look back at my school years, but I was good at music and I just had this, there was some sketchy parts of my town and I just sort of had this a natural street smarts that I apply to everything I apply and I just know I can see what's often going to work and what's not going to work.

(01:09:37):

I talk to bands all the time about looking at things from a street smart perspective when we make creative decisions and so on. That's a word I've always used I should do. And again, not having gone to school for recording and this and that, just sort of being a scientist and using common sense and tweaking on stuff and making mistakes. I always talk about street smart recording. It's like if I was to ever do a video series, that's what I would do. I would call it machines, street Smart recording techniques. And it would be interesting because to watch me go through a process, because I don't have the same terms for a lot of things people do, and the way I think and the way I approach micing stuff up and doing stuff is not off YouTube and it's not off a manual and it's not off that it's just sort of using common sense and so on and so forth.

(01:10:36):

It's banned Blue Water Highway that I'm doing now who's like a Americana hozier or dirtier Cold War kids that you could put them in the Imagine Dragons or Coldplay category, alt rock type band. We had a real Leslie speaker, the spinning speaker to mic up. Truthfully, I had never micd up a Leslie before and I didn't tell him that, but I didn't want to go to YouTube and I didn't want to look at Emmanuel and how to do it. I wanted to look at it, understand it, walk around it with my ears and find places where I thought it sounded cool, and pick mics that I know from just trial and error what they sound like in the end game and see what I would do and then check it, make sure it's dope. And it's funny, sometimes it turns out that I then go later and watch something or see a YouTube video and go, oh yeah, that's how a lot of people do it.

(01:11:44):

I need, and I like to stumble across stuff in my own way. I think it's important for me and I'm securing it because I've done it so much and I am not going to make stupid mistakes. And that's an important part of my methodology. It's just like a chef. You can learn to, anyone could cook something, anyone could follow a recipe. But the great chefs have been tasting and trying and doing methods and heating and cooling and cooking methods, and then they just get these instincts about marrying spices and techniques on cooking that make them the world's best chefs. That's right. And that just comes from doing it, doing it. Experience trial and error. And that's the guy I want to be.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):

Now that reminds me, you told me to ask you about something. You're working on this record that's a total game changer. Is that what it was?

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):

No, not at all. It's something totally spacey and crazy, maybe even too tripping out there for this podcast, but it's a great story.

Speaker 2 (01:12:58):

Now I'm really curious.

Speaker 3 (01:12:59):

All right, so alright, so basically I think I found God on this record actually. No, no, no, no. I didn't find God. I got it. I understood the God code. I cracked the religion code on this record. All I want to hear about this. Alright, so I am raised 100% atheist. There was no religion in my family whatsoever and completely uneducated in religion. Maybe I have images of going with friends on the block to church or a synagogue when I was maybe, I dunno, 5, 6, 7 years old.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):

So not even traditional stuff, just

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):

Nothing. No, dude, my parents are atheists. My grandparents are atheists, which you'll never hear about.

Speaker 2 (01:13:45):

Wow.

Speaker 3 (01:13:46):

So this band, they're not a Christian band at all, but they go to church and the drummer in this band was one of these guys raised in the church from playing in front of plenty of tons of people from when he was five years old on drums. And he's all connected in the whole real gospel. I'm talking, you know what I'm saying, the real gospel urban church thing. It's the south. And he grew up in this and he was amazing. And I'm a huge fan of people raised that perform in the gospel. Churches. They're

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):

Incredible musicians.

Speaker 3 (01:14:28):

Ridiculous. So he invites me down. So I wanted to go, I was like, this is sick. I've never been to, not only I've not been to church, but I've never been to this is what I would love to see. I've never been to one of those true big mama singing for God funky. It's like gospel churches. So on Sunday I drove down to his church where that he's been playing with and his family and playing with, and he's been doing it forever. And I roll up to this place and it's rolling up to a freaking venue. This place has an 8,000 person cap. And I walk in there and I'm basically the only white kid. Oh yeah. I have to say too, I hit my bang stick, I smoked some weed in the parking lot before I went in too, which just to make it even that much more stony and amazing.

(01:15:26):

And I'm okay. I'm okay with putting myself in different situations. So I go in there and first of all, it was awesome. I mean it was like a show. It was pure excitement. It was like talk about audience, crowd participation, talk about, I mean the most incredible singers, incredible things. And then it's great. And then I'm listening to the preacher when he's talking and there was whatever Bible references and stuff I didn't connect to, I didn't understand, but I took away something that just clicked. I was like, oh, this religion thing, I get it. These guys are the curators and enhancers of positive energy, what it's like. So yeah, people are going to the church and they give some of their money away, but this is what they get. They get to be a part of these positive belief energy systems. So basically it's like, and that was just like, so yeah, what is God?

(01:16:29):

It's energy. I don't know about this Bible and what they told or that Bible, what they told and the stories that were used to control nations and whatever. But what they are selling is belief, positive belief, positive energy. And that is a very, very real thing that I've always known about the power of attraction, the sort of in the studio or in life or just being around positive people. That's a very real thing. There's an energy that comes, there's energy and it's physics and it comes off your body. And there's tests on water where people look at water and the label says beauty, love. And then the other thing here says Hitler or whatever, and they analyze those crystals and they're very different. This is real. And basically I realized that yo, I was like George Lucas and Spielberg, they got it right with the force, the energy field created by all living things that surrounds us, that binds the galaxy together, whatever they would say.

(01:17:40):

It was like that is religion. I was like, it's the force. And it's like this is a very real thing. So it just enlightened me to think, wow, it's really, really important in life to really just put out positive vibes and to surround yourself with people with positivity. And this is what this church was really teaching. I'm like, fuck yeah. If you want to know the meaning of God, from my perspective, I found God because I connected to the sure truth and reality that putting yourself around positive energy, putting positive energy out into the world and from living things too, moving back to Jersey by the ocean, being out in the hill country in Austin and being by nature, being around people that give off positive energy, giving off so much belief and positive energy. That's a real thing that works and that's made religion stay in fashion for all these decades. I mean the story's not holding weight in the Bible mean, but what all these people are getting is they're getting this positive, this real positive energy surrounding them and it's changing their lives and it's working. And amen to that,

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):

That saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Have you ever heard that saying

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):

No, but that makes so much sense.

Speaker 2 (01:19:22):

I totally agree with that. And it plays right into what you're saying that I think not only we give out good positive or negative energy, but we also take it in. And so I think it's super important to surround ourselves very consciously and deliberately with the right things so that we can put out the right things and benefit from them and also help others benefit from them. And I've seen it go both ways in my life, being around people in situations that put out bad energy versus

Speaker 3 (01:20:02):

People

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):

In situations that are more like what I would want ideally. And the difference is not small, let's put it that way. The difference is huge.

Speaker 3 (01:20:13):

Yeah. Yeah, it's real. And I even think it's science. It's so real.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):

Well, I'm sure there is a scientific level to it.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):

Oh yeah, no, no, it's energy. That's what we are. We're water. I think we're 75% water our bodies and we're sodium. And the ocean is the exact same fraction by the way, water and salt and the force. It's an energy field created by all living things. It's surrounds us and penetrates us and binds the galaxy together. Fucking George Lucas, the force. That's God.

Speaker 2 (01:20:52):

That's God. George Lucas is God. And that's real. He definitely figured it out.

Speaker 3 (01:20:58):

Yeah,

Speaker 2 (01:20:58):

Big time. So I've got some questions here from our listeners

Speaker 3 (01:21:04):

Awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):

That I'd like to ask you because we've been on here for a while and I don't want to take up your whole day

Speaker 3 (01:21:13):

All good.

Speaker 2 (01:21:13):

But I want to get to some of these questions because like I said, people are very excited to have you on here. So here's one from Rodney Elten Ball, which is the making of sacrament. DVD is something I watch a lot and often I love your hands on approach with the band and helping Randy come up with vocal lines. What advice can you give us to be as included as possible with the band in making musical decisions,

Speaker 3 (01:21:46):

Earning trust immediately? It's your job as a record producer and absolutely. It's like, and I'll tell a band too, whether I've been recommended to the band by maybe some they're working with an a r guy or a manager, or even if it's come within the band that the bands maybe are fans of some of my other records. I will tell a band too, my first job is during your trust. And that's not just because of my discography and wait, don't talk too much at first. Don't be over the top at first. Be poignant, say the right things and be sure of yourself and earn the trust. That's your job. If we're talking about record producers here, right? That's your job. Or movie directors, we work with actors and scripts same as us.

(01:22:39):

The scripts are the songs. The actors are the musicians doing them and they're telling a story and they may have input on that and they have to figure out how to sell it. That's what we are. They shouldn't call us record producers we're producers, they should call us directors. That's what we are they to. You have to earn the trust of your artist. And that answers Rodney's question, how to engage them and make them believe. And it's okay if you don't have the answer, by the way, if you're producing a record and you don't have the answer, it's okay to chill and work with what you got and think about it until you do have the answer. Or discuss creatively as a group, how could this be better? Blah, blah, blah. Not just fucking be like, this fucking course sucks. And walk out of the room and let them do it. That's the worst thing you could do. I say to a band, I have something in my head. Then I tell them that their course sucks and then I say, but this is why. And what if we tried something like this? What if we flip the beat like that and I'll maybe sing them something or whatever, and then I'll let them interpret it into their version of that.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):

So always offer some sort of, maybe not the solution, but a pathway to the solution.

Speaker 3 (01:24:07):

Absolutely. If not the solution either or. But yeah, you don't tell a band This isn't good enough and walk away. I would never want to be in a band and hire that producer. You know what I mean? Yeah. So your job is you're a coach, you're a director, you're there for guidance and to promote belief and positive energy we just talked about. So

Speaker 2 (01:24:33):

Here's a question from Craig Douglas, which is, are you still tracking symbols and shells separately? And if so, can you explain the process more?

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):

I haven't done it in a while. I don't have a method. I'm a method list producer. So meet a band and we come up with, we talk about who their audience is and who their audience could be, and we talk about ways to give them a signature. I think every album should have a signature sound to it. All the great records do. I could pick out guitar tones and raging against the machine or blah blah, blah. That's an extreme example. But that's really important to me that everything I choose, every band I hope to work with is on that page and wants something. So that was one of the creations for Lambic. God and I have done it, I've done it a number of times since. But it was really working for them. That was the right creative decision for them because when I met Lemon, God, they had just signed to the major label and they could have probably at that moment worked with any metal producer. And I wasn't pigeonholed as a metal producer at that time at all. And my manager said, go meet with these guys. You're going to hate 'em, but go

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):

Hate them as people or hate them as musicians.

Speaker 3 (01:26:08):

He's like, you're going to hate, they're so intense and they're so math. And I was like, I wasn't listening to, I didn't know Metal yet. When I first met Lamb of God, I'd done very cool progressive music. I produced a King Crimson record, a clutch record I grew up on yes and Rush, but I definitely never listened to Metal as I grew up. I thought metal was Motley Crue and they were just like disguised pop songs. I didn't know. I only knew one thing. I knew Pantera. And that made it into my world of where I would go out clubbing and dancing to. There were these clubs where you could go the limelight on Tuesday nights or when I lived in England, there was anything you could go dancing to a mixture of heavy shit. You could dance to Public Enemy and this and that mixed with Faith No More and other rock things that were super funky.

Speaker 2 (01:27:18):

Willamette God's kind of in a whole different category.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):

So men lambic God. And the first thing Mark says to me, I met them at a hotel in New York City, first thing Mark, the first thing out of Mark's mouth was, so machine, what makes you think that you would know anything better or more to do with our music than we would having that we've been doing it for the last 10, 12 years successfully. I was like, whoa, that's a good question. Brutal. What a way to get started. Yeah, right. I was like, I mean I probably stumbled over my words a bit, but basically in a nutshell what I said was perspective. I was like perspective. I was on what you're doing and in a way to make it as cred as possible and have more people come to your party. So then I went through the whole list of everything I hated about Metal at the time because doing my research to meet Lama, God, I went to the Electric factory and I saw live, it was like kill switching gauge Lamb of God and two other relevant bands, metal bands that were buzzing at that time.

(01:28:41):

And I'm just like, I'm a scientist. I'm sort of just like, I never have the urge to go into the pit. And I just understood, I listening to wow, the energy flow and what's connecting and the needs kind of like maybe the way a DJ would understand certain beats at certain times and their set. And I was just listening and why was Kill Switch doing a little better than Lamb MAGA at that time? And I just sat there and watched all four bands and listened to that current day's metal production and I just sat with them in the hotel and said, this is the problem. I was like, what's up with drums? They don't sound real at all. They sound like drum machines with live symbols on top bass guitar. What the fuck's going on there? No one cares about, no can hardly hear it. I was like, guitars, they're super scooped and blend in too much sometimes so busy with the kick drums and vocals. No one what? No one gives a shit about vocals. I was in metals, you can scream, but doesn't it matter that you hear what the guy's saying his message? And they were just like, you've got the job,

Speaker 2 (01:29:58):

Dude. Let me tell you also, back in those days when you were doing Lamb of God records and I was really starting to learn about production and I would analyze records, I'd listen to those and I'd be like, this doesn't sound like the other records. You can understand his vocals front and center on a pop record yet it's still heavy as hell. And to me, I always thought to myself, this is the reason that Lamb of God is bigger than the other bands because the vocals are treated the way that you would on a superstar artist. The vocals are out front and you can understand everything. And for years, I've always thought that that was one of their secrets to success was not mixing the vocals like regular metal, but mixing the vocals more like pop, not obviously not pop, but more in that way where the vocals are the lead instrument.

Speaker 3 (01:30:54):

Yeah, but now to answer Greg's question about drums, Chris being so metal, so metal, Chris Adler, oh my God, Chris needed these modern records that were fully sound replaced drums. So he needed his drums at all the same volume and he needed them a hundred percent. And that was a rule. And I wanted drums to sound like drums. So I was like, so again, street smarts, right? I was like, alright, so how can we do this and have our own brand of cool and difference and achieve the goal? So I was like, well, if I record the drum shells separately from the symbols I can, and this is what I did. And I had help from engineers and interns, thank God I recorded the drums all as overdubs and I individually normalized each hit, every literal kick hit, every literal snare, every literal Tom hit individually one at a time went and normalized them.

(01:32:01):

So they were all original hits, almost like original samples. Why samples? Because they had no symbol bleed. So that to me makes them samples. But individual samples and all individually normalized at the same energy level, I guess that was kind of a new thing that was an original sound and it was brutal and it was giving the energy and giving the attitude that their audience needed. So, so for Craig, that came about by just a street smart attitude and how am I going to make this work and give them their own brand of original awesomeness? And I've done it and we did that again on Sacrament. And Josh Wilbur, my engineer for Sacrament who took the reins, he kept doing that too, I believe.

Speaker 2 (01:32:58):

And that accomplished the goal of having it sound real, but also be totally on the grid but also be totally metal, totally

Speaker 3 (01:33:08):

Metal, totally till every hit evenly as loud in metal. It's like a marching band instrument. It's like on a small speaker, a kick drum should have the same presence as the snare. The Tom should have lots of high end and should have the same presence as and when you're putting together technical riff, they should, you should be able to hear, you need to be able to hear every hit and understand what's going on musically. So in Chris's mind, it wasn't about accents with lower volumes and higher volumes, they all had to be even. But the character and tone changed was really cool because when you hit a drum light, it sounds different than when you hit a drum hard. So we had the best of both worlds.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):

Great answer. So here's one from Brantley McMinn, I'm sure you've been asked about this a lot. There's about 10 questions about this, so I need to ask, this is me talking. So here's the Brantley's question. Others have mentioned it, but in Lamb of Gods, the making of Sacrament video on the Walk with me in hell, DVD, you had Randy run around the block to make him sound exasperated during the vocal at the end of Walk With Me in Hell. How did you decide that that's what the vocal performance need to be and what other off the wall things have you tried to get artists to do in order to get the right performance out of them? And also welcome to Central Texas.

Speaker 3 (01:34:34):

Oh thanks. About the Texas thing. Yeah, so basically the songs Walk With Me through Hell, right? And amazing, it's amazing songs and it's desperate and he's beat up. I mean that's what the lyrics are. So the run around the block thing, I'll admit I kind of knew I wasn't, I mean the guy's like a chain smoker and I mean I kind of knew I wasn't going to get the vocal. I'll be honest, there's got to keep you real here. I knew I probably wasn't going to get the vocal screams, and if I did that would be great. But I knew I was going to get the breaths. I knew I was going to get, he came back in, we threw the headphones on him and I just started pushing the mic in his face. He would try to scream and then pull the mic away and I would be losing the breath. So I know I needed the breath, so I would shove the mic back in his face. It's like same thing. Breathe and in truth, little insider secret information. I don't think I got, maybe I got one actual scream line, but I got all the breaths, the real desperate out of beat up thing, breath, and a lot of the screams had to come from concentrated focus studio screaming. So what other off the wall things though I've done?

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):

But those breaths, those breaths are what give it that vibe though.

Speaker 3 (01:35:56):

Yeah, yeah, sure. They came up with Sacrament and I was like, I really wanted the record to be called Walk With Me Through Hell. It was too late though. I calling 'em was like, dudes fucking sacrament. What is that? It's so metal. It's like sacrament. I was like, what was this record? What was the experience of making this record? Walk with me through, I mean, look at how that sounds. Just read that you're not even a metal fan. Just read that Lamb of God Walk with Me through Hell. I mean, how inviting is that to turn that track on? And it was too late. They'd done all the artwork for Sacrament All. So that DVD that Brantley is talking about, so they named that Walk With Me Through Hell, but I had My Way Sacrament would've been called Walk With Me Through Hell. Perfect.

Speaker 2 (01:36:53):

I like that name better for the record.

Speaker 3 (01:36:54):

I know, right? But anyway, and dude, I don't know other crazy things I've done. It's fun. Come up with crazy things I've done a few, none are really coming to mind right now.

Speaker 2 (01:37:10):

If you think of something that's cool. If not, no worries.

Speaker 3 (01:37:13):

Oh yeah. Well on Blue Water, we just on Blue Water Highway, the band right now, this sort of real dark awesome country song, a country esque song. He's a great soul country singer. And at the Machine chop in Texas, basically the slogan there is we can do whatever the fuck we want. I have eight acres. So I lit a Gargantuous bonfire and I recorded him outside three live takes that we comped together and I put him by the fire and we filmed. It was a really cool experience and just for him to put him in the space about what that was doing, and I was like, what are you doing to me machine? I'm like, so here, I don't want to burn you alive, but I want you to be close enough to this fire. I want to hear the crackles even from the fire. I want it to be about halfway through the song. I want you to be starting to get really uncomfortable from the heat so I won't kill you or burn you alive. Just get how about five feet from that huge flame. So yeah, that just happened the other day.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):

That's a good one too. I have a question for you that's not on here. Cool. I'm a big mindless self indulgence fan have been for a while and their production is so unique. That was such a unique thing. And when you started talking earlier about how you came up making beats and stuff and adding guitar over it, the first thing I thought was that explains a little in my head that explains you working with mindless, that's almost what their production sounds like is in some ways old school hip hop beats with guitar through a sampler or something, but modern,

Speaker 3 (01:39:06):

That's what exactly what it is. I mean they did, even at that time when you could start working on Pro Tools, Jimmy, who's brilliant is still sampling guitars and triggering them with midi, still doing that and just doing it all on the sequencer. That's how I had to start. I had no choice but to do that, but yeah, that's what he does. Yeah, Jimmy, talk about earning trust. That kid is very, very great artist, very talented, very precious about who he lets into his scene, but we were matched big time and we hit it off and it took a minute, but I earned his trust and it was great to be a part of that record.

Speaker 2 (01:39:49):

Okay, that's what I thought it was, man. I thought that that's what it sounded like and one of my all time favorite records and productions. One of the times, like we were saying earlier too, sometimes the best sounding records aren't your favorite records or whatever, but I feel like their production is just perfect for them. It sounds just right for what their music is. It's just a great team, it sounds like to me, you and them. So, alright, here's one from Connor, which is what goes into your distorted rhythm guitar tones. Do you like to layer tones and amps and drive mic breeze, blend in distortion pedals? Or do you have other more unique tricks, or is it a simple, fairly straightforward process for you like 57 on the Mesa cab with the 51 50 and you're done?

Speaker 3 (01:40:49):

Okay, this is the guy you're talking to. This is the method list guy. I'm going to answer this. I'm sure every record, there's a new plan for every record. I've done it all. I've done lots of miking techniques, lots of different stuff, and absolutely there's things that I'll do for metal and it's going to be totally different than Bluewater Highway I'm doing right now. It's all combos, all ribbon mics on those cool indie alt rock sound vintage vibes, like done modern style with great plugins and great pre and yeah, there's the scientists and the chef in me just sort of changing it up. I bet he wants to know about metal tones maybe. I don't know Connor, but I'm

Speaker 2 (01:41:41):

Going to say probably, yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:41:42):

So I could tell you what I commonly do for metal, which is something that I have a way I separate, I go into scientist mode and I'll test out a million ways of doing things and not often with the band though. And I'll come up with these and then I get these things and I go into music mode and I apply them and I just don't look back for miking metal. I kind of look at 57 and a 4 21 as one mic. So there's often both of those on a speaker. I went through a phase. I was really early in on the Reamp thing, reamp box thing when it came out. And I went through a phase where I was sending to many multiple amps and cabinets and doing blends with them. That's how I did Lamb of God that way. And the sacrament sound was an interesting mistake where all these, it was maybe three amps and three cabs and moving them around and trying to find a unique sound and blah, blah, blah.

(01:42:53):

And one of the mics was out of phase and I didn't know it at first, but one, I was out of phase and the best sound came is just moving that one fader up a little bit. It acted as an EQ before it was loud enough and even with other mics and would sound out of face and horrible way before that. This is all physics way before that, it acted as a subtle EQ and carved this annoying part out of the mids really nicely. And that's how a big part of that sound was made. But so I'm in metal doing less than multiple amp and going for picking a style, we're going to use this mesa on this for this part and this orange on that. And guys, common sense here, street smarts, by the way, it's pretty common that when you have an orange amp, the orange speaker cabinet works real well with it. Really common when you have a mesa amp, a mesa cab works real well with it. I've switched cabs a ton, but if you've got less gear and you want to make it work that works. These designers spend a lot of time matching their cabinets with their amps. So that works common sense, right?

Speaker 2 (01:44:07):

Yeah, just a good

Speaker 3 (01:44:08):

Combination. Yeah, I look at a 57 to 4 21 in a way as one mic and it will start, what's the center thing? The center round part, the cone or what's that called on the speaker? You talking about the dust cap? Okay, that's a dust cap. All right. I didn't go to school for this, so give me a break here. So that's the dust cap. So it's like, yeah, they both go on sort of like where the dust cap meets the cone. They both kind of start there. And the real smart thing to do is if you've ever experimented by moving a mic across the speaker, you can see how the EQ changes so much. So I kind of look at those as one thing, and those two mics go into usually a Chandler TG two, which is a transformer neve clone based thing. But what's really cool about this TG two is it has this internal summing, it's two mic pres in one unit and as this internal summing, and there's something super magical about that unit.

(01:45:08):

The way it sums, its two mic breeze that just seems to blow away any console that probably has to run a shit ton more wires and go to the shit ton more pathways to get to its buses. So this thing thing just has this link that it just puts these two together, so it's magical. So it's usually going into the Chandler TG two, those two mics. And then this is really smart, really smart common sense thing on the amps. I put all the dials at five, all the EQ and this and that. And then if the sound isn't right, then that's when I then go back and move the mics. So what I find is that if you mic the speaker where the dials on the amps are where they're designed to be straight up, then they work, right? You ever mic up a cabinet and you're like moving up the base knob and it's not getting much base here or you're moving it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:03):

Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:46:03):

Right. Well, that helps this. So it's really smart to put your dials up straight and see where your mic give you, then try moving the mics to get the sound good. Now, your presence knob, your high end knob, your mid knob, they work, they actually work really much better. And then I do a lot of dialing for the riff. I don't set a sound. Don't set a sound and cut the whole heavy song. I, I'll say, play me the riff please. And if this is a single note riff, it all goes to the same track and it all goes to the same track on my doll. But I was like, I'll dial for the riff and there's subtle moves. I'll move the, oh, if it's single note and he's digging in, I'll put the presence a certain way or the mid a certain way. That's dope. And if it says Deftones chord and he's doing all these harmonic things and it's going to, it's go through the distortion and get ratty and ouchy, I'll dial for that riff and I'll usually lower the presence and do this. And then the listener, it probably just comes out more even and sounding right. So that's another thing I do, which will help Connor dial for the riff,

Speaker 2 (01:47:15):

Dial for the riff. And when you say dial for the riff, does that mean that throughout a song you will change the amp settings? Yeah. To go?

Speaker 3 (01:47:25):

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:47:25):

Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:47:26):

On setting, I use a stereo interleave track. I take the di and I put that on the left, and I take my, it all goes down just one mono input, and I put that to the right. And so they're an interleaf track, so they're locked together. So I can't make editing mistakes and I hope that I never ever have to listen to the di or use it, but if I do, it's always right there attached to the file. And by the way, reamp people, another great thing learned from mistakes, if you're going to be amping, the best amps come from the performances, from the tone that was closest to what you're amping. So right as a guitar player, if your amp is compressed a certain way or saturated a certain way, you hit the guitar and feel the guitar for that sound. You play for that sound, right. I made mistakes in the past where it's like, oh, we're just going to track through this pod or this plugin, and then I'm just going to reamp it. Well, that affects how good players play. And then the amps don't work as good. So get your sound, even if you're going to reamp, you're always better off performing into a sound you could dial is close to what you think the end result should be because that reamp will make the best reamp.

Speaker 2 (01:48:46):

That's a great piece of advice. And I can give you the perfect example of that is on the old pods, they used to have this compression on them, which would make you, you couldn't get rid of it. That screwed me up before. Yeah, they would make you pick a lot lighter and then you go to Reamp into an amp that keeps you honest like a Bogner or something. And where it would reveal every single problem with your picking. It just didn't sound good. It didn't work, right. And so yeah, that's a great piece of advice right there, because I have suffered from that one many times when amping.

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):

Right on.

Speaker 2 (01:49:26):

Okay, here is a question from Mane Cabrales, which is, what was your impression experience producing King Crimson?

Speaker 3 (01:49:35):

Oh, good question. That was, I'm very appreciative that I got to produce King Crimson record. And by the way, I think it's the last ever studio King Crimson record to be ever made. I was just talking to Pat Mato, the drummer in Austin, and they're like, no, Robert Fri, he is like, he has no intention of ever making another studio record. Robert hates the studio and it's all about the live performance room and improv and all that. So that was, I'm really, really stoked and blessed to be able to have done that. And that just comes from just trying, putting yourself, asking and showing positive energy and approaching a band that you're probably not thinking you're going to get, but it's okay.

(01:50:29):

It's funny, I was a little too nerdy and afraid to approach girls in high school. I wouldn't do that, but I have no problem approaching bands in that way. Any band, I will approach them and love to sit and talk to 'em about music. So that's lucky for me. So I was a big prims and fan. I spun them a lot at my college radio station, and it just turned out there was a connection. My manager knew how to get to their manager, and I reached out to them and they liked this head PE track, believe it or not, that I

Speaker 2 (01:51:08):

Of all things,

Speaker 3 (01:51:09):

Of All things, no, it was a song Pack Bell, which is basically like this incredible distorting, looping, massive attack feel of a track, massive attack. But there are UK electronic band,

Speaker 2 (01:51:24):

But still, it's just interesting how unexpected life can be in that. King Crimson would be into a head pe track. And

Speaker 3 (01:51:35):

They heard that. It's just interesting,

(01:51:39):

This guy's not going to take the King Crimson out of King Crimson. That's impossible, but oh, but he could add something. I see what he's doing and the way these layers and this growth and this distorted ambiance that I made with this head pe track packed belt, it's really interesting. They thought that would be a really interesting application to bring this kid in. And they did. I mean, just by trying, I've been turned down by many bands. They took me on and they asked me my opinions on things, and I produced King Crimson and so lucky. And it's crazy. I mean, Robert Fripp, it's like being in the studio with Hannibal Lecter, except,

Speaker 2 (01:52:30):

Except he's not going to

Speaker 3 (01:52:31):

Eat you, except he's not going to eat you. And he's actually quite nice, but it's super intimidating because Hannibal Lecter would, the way he would talk, he would just cut right to your core and fucking, he was a philosopher and just brought you right down to the truth. So Robert, he

Speaker 2 (01:52:50):

Was rather polite. Robert

Speaker 3 (01:52:51):

Was polite, and he would come in and have his cappuccino and he would do this, and he wouldn't sit there and not talk and let everyone talk. And then he would say something once in a while and it was like, oh yeah, he's right. And it was just so meaningful and so truthful. So it was great. And then Adrian Ballou, you're a guitar guy, you would know Adrian. He was so,

Speaker 2 (01:53:17):

Oh, he's great.

Speaker 3 (01:53:18):

He was so great to get to work with and create with, and he was the soul of the band, and we spent a lot of time doing part of it at Adrian's house. And I'm very lucky I got to work with those guys. So that's an insight for being able to produce a King Crimson record there.

Speaker 2 (01:53:39):

It's so cool that you got to work on that. They're definitely one of those bands that's just, they help create what we know as progressive music.

Speaker 3 (01:53:50):

They're

Speaker 2 (01:53:51):

In the DNA of all progressive music in some way, shape or form, much in the way that Black Sabbath rifts

Speaker 3 (01:54:00):

In

Speaker 2 (01:54:00):

The DNA of every single metal band ever.

Speaker 3 (01:54:04):

Well said.

Speaker 2 (01:54:05):

So it's just cool. That one's just damn cool. Here's one from Kikos. We haven't touched on this, but too much. What kind of artists do you want to work with? What excites you now? And for me personally, this is my take on the question is you've worked on so many genres, so many different bands at this point, and you've worked on seminal records for some of those bands too. So you've kind of done it all in lots of ways, or some people would think that you've done it all. I'm sure you don't feel like you've done it all. No. What excites you now? What gets you going?

Speaker 3 (01:54:47):

I want to work with great bands, period. That's it. I want to work with people that feel they don't have another choice but to do their band and be in music. That's what it was for everyone when I grew up. I want to work with people that are more talented than me and learn. I grew up in a household with one of the most proficient classical musicians in the world, my dad. And I'm comfortable around people that are play better than me or think differently than me. And I'm comfortable directing that and bringing a street smart mentality to making those songs or pieces or artwork more popular for all of us. Regular people, a good gap. So to answer that question, I want to work with great bands. I want to work with bands that are going to stick together. I don't really like what I've been seeing in the last while.

(01:55:49):

I visit some bands on Warp Tour that are new bands, and I meet them and they say they're talking to me and they're talking to me about what they're going to do when their band's over. And I'm like, what? They're already thinking that. So they're on Warped Tour on summer camp, and that would've been a big deal for me as a kid. And yes, they live in the world of disposable music and yes, the world where you can get a lot more of it, but they're already thinking about what they're going to do when this is over. Don't say that to me. Don't hire me if that's the way you think about music, not interested. That's what I look for. I look for people that are going to do it no matter what, whether they're making money at it or not. I don't care if you're a big band or a small band. It's like every band I meet I need to talk to creatively and connect with before we get into a studio and make sure we're a good match. And it's a big thrill to me to be invited by any of those bands into help them. It's a big honor and a big thrill, and I really get off on being able to take a different genre and make it connect to more people.

Speaker 2 (01:57:04):

Great. Here's one from Maddie Pellis, which is Boys Night Out Train Wreck is one of my all-time favorite records. How much input did you have in the songwriting?

Speaker 3 (01:57:14):

None on that record. None. To be honest. That was a big concept record. So with all sorts of loads and voices and melodies, sure. I mean, that's not songwriting. A band comes in and they've written a song that's complete and I suggest a different melody, or I suggest a different rhythm, or I suggest a different lyric that's producing. It's not songwriting. So certainly that happened, but that band had a whole amazing concept, record written as in chapters like in a book before I even walked in the room.

Speaker 2 (01:57:52):

Sometimes. In my opinion, doing your job as a producer means not meddling with things that don't need to be meddled with

Speaker 3 (01:58:00):

God. Imagine being the band. So let's look at what you're saying. Imagine being the band and being in a studio with a producer and he's trying to make you his band or make you something that he's fallen into that he's had success with these type of bands. So he's trying to take your band, which is this kind of band, and make it this kind of band. I would be so bummed if I was that band in that situation.

Speaker 2 (01:58:26):

I've been in that situation. It sucks.

Speaker 3 (01:58:28):

No, I don't do that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:30):

Yeah, I've definitely been there before and I can tell you from the perspective of the artist, it's not much fun. It makes for a very psychologically exhausting work environment. So I dig your approach better. Well, Machin, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you. And for spending this much time talking and just being so open. This is a good lengthy episode and it's been great talking to you. And thanks for your patience also with me last week, because I know that I canceled on you like four times. I couldn't speak though. Fair enough.

Speaker 3 (01:59:11):

It's all good, man.

Speaker 2 (01:59:12):

Thank you so much, man. Thank

Speaker 3 (01:59:13):

You. Anytime. I'd love to come back, whatever it is. Great for me too. Have you back there. Anyone out there that could help me with my social media, find me through my website. I'm not going to do it. It's one thing that it's hard for me, it's stressful for me. So this is great, and thank you, because this is the help I need connecting to bands and other young aspiring producer engineers, which I would love to do, but until stuff like this, it was only if you showed up like Will or Zach, it is only if you showed up. Now, it's great to be able to do this. I like talking better than reading and writing.

Speaker 2 (01:59:56):

Well, we've actually got other things that we do. If you're looking to do more active stuff online, I can talk to you about it via email or after we get off the podcast sometime, we've got a few other things you might be interested in, so we'll definitely talk about those. And just thank you again for coming on. The

Speaker 1 (02:00:19):

Unstoppable Recording Machine podcast is brought to you by Bala Guitars. Founded in 2014, Bala Guitars strives to bring modern aesthetics and options to vintage inspired designs. Go to bala ge guitars.com for more info. This episode of the podcast is also brought to you by Fishman inspired performance technology. Fishman is dedicated to helping musicians of all styles achieve the truest sound possible wherever and whenever they plug in. Go to fishman.com for more info to ask us questions, make suggestions and interact. Visit nail the mix.com/podcast and subscribe today.