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Nate Washburn: Producing Your Favorite Music · The BlackSheep Podcast: Presented by HM Magazine

• 0:30
  Today we have Nate Washburn with us. We're so stoked for this conversation.
• 0:34
  Nate. You've been a part of some of our favorite albums and favorite artists
• 0:39
  of all time, and we just can't be more stoked to chat about all
• 0:43
  the things that you do in the world, all the music you've made,
• 0:46
  all the music that you've helped make, and uh yeah, I don't even
• 0:49
  know where to begin other than how are you today? I am doing good.
• 0:54
  I got I got some stuff done today. I got I renewed my
• 1:00
  health insurance plan. Oh that's exciting, right, big boy shit right there?
• 1:06
  Uh yeah, No, yeah, it's through the marketplace thing. Uh.
• 1:10
  I'm old, so so I don't. I don't get to ride the
• 1:14
  sweet, sweet coattails of my folks anymore. I still do, but not
• 1:19
  in that way. Uh, Nate, you have, And we don't want
• 1:23
  to do the whole thing around this, But you have worked with Matt Goldman
• 1:26
  for a while. Goldman for a while was known for his facial hair.
• 1:32
  You've got some facial hair going on right now that just could be called the
• 1:34
  washburn. And I think that's a great name for some facial hair. It's
• 1:38
  very right now. My like long. My normal hair and my beard are
• 1:44
  like together. That happens like when I wear a hat and headphones like this.
• 1:47
  That's that's a thing. I don't know what if you like dreaded them
• 1:49
  together, dude, I know, dude, I think here's the thing.
• 1:53
  Here's here. Let me run this down, this whole facial hair thing.
• 1:56
  Right, facial hair, It's cool. We dig it. It's a you
• 2:01
  know, as a human man, it's a part of it's a part of
• 2:06
  our history. Yeah, for for better or worse. Right, the history
• 2:09
  of man is a peppered peppered with controversy, but facial hair pretty much pretty
• 2:15
  much in the clear. It's pretty cool. The biggest appeal to me is
• 2:20
  that I do nothing. It grows on my face and I pay very little
• 2:24
  attention to it, so I do literally nothing other than it gets washed the
• 2:30
  same way that my hair gets washed, like maybe once a week. That's
• 2:32
  about it. I don't really think about I literally forget all the time,
• 2:38
  like someone'd be like I was like, oh yeah, that's like a big
• 2:42
  part of my like image is like this. And that's why I've long haired
• 2:46
  right now too, is because I just like just stop, I just stopped
• 2:51
  thinking about it, and it just became a look that people I think like
• 2:55
  that. It's just a look like historically, it's just you know what you
• 3:00
  actually look like. You look like somebody who knows how to make moonshine,
• 3:06
  which I don't. I could maybe save myself a decent chunk of change if
• 3:10
  I learned the paints on your bathtub is safe, is what you're saying.
• 3:14
  Yeah, exactly exactly. I had some real moodshine recently. I was in
• 3:20
  North Carolina a couple of months ago. Real moonshine. I love that shit.
• 3:23
  That stuff is so good. I don't know if you guys have had
• 3:25
  mood I've never. I've personally never had real homemade moonshine. But the funny
• 3:31
  thing is, my brother has a bunch of like friends from college or whatever
• 3:38
  that are from North Carolina that make moonshine. So maybe that's a thing.
• 3:42
  I don't know, And he's had it and he thought it was good,
• 3:44
  and and uh, yeah, I think it's interesting. I don't know.
• 3:47
  I don't know anyone that makes it. Now, if they did, I
• 3:50
  would be they wouldn't need to supply me with whatever. I mean. I'm
• 3:53
  assuming it's is it just like, does it have a taste to it that's
• 3:58
  like not, It's not like vodka or or whatever. Yeah, it's good.
• 4:00
  It's kind of taste I don't know, kind of like a mine went
• 4:03
  down smooth. It kind of was like a vanilla taste, but like very
• 4:08
  very very subtle, like a like it really did taste like alcohol, but
• 4:11
  like there was a like a tinge of vanilla there or something, but it
• 4:15
  wasn't flavored at all. I mean, it's just naturally was that taste.
• 4:18
  I mean I kind of get like a like a like a burnt vanilla or
• 4:21
  like a bitter vanilla flavor. Yeah, that sound I really like. I'm
• 4:28
  really into anything that has like a lot of like botanical type you know,
• 4:34
  like spirits. I really really like Chartrusse, which is like the the like
• 4:42
  spirits that are made by the French monks. Yeah, and it's like my
• 4:46
  favorite. That's my favorite. I mean I can't it's it's expensive, So
• 4:49
  I don't have you too watched this new Netflix show called like drink Master I
• 4:54
  think is what it's called. It's basically like a spinoff of like tattoo Master
• 4:57
  or ink Master, but they it's like all these people who are like renowned
• 5:00
  drink like mixologists and they just make like these amazing drinks. It was an
• 5:06
  incredible show. I highly recommend it's really cool. Yeah, I mean I
• 5:11
  might check it out if I'm just kids on Netflix, and I recommend it.
• 5:15
  Have you ever had aquavite? No A if you lived in Minnesota for
• 5:21
  however long you have to have aquavi when I lived Okay, first off,
• 5:26
  I grew up in a super super like conservative no drinking nothing like that,
• 5:31
  like home and family like no one. I don't think anyone in my family
• 5:35
  drinks at all, so like that wasn't really like that part of the Minnesotan
• 5:40
  culture like didn't play in. So yeah, I'm sure there's a bunch of
• 5:45
  stuff that I've you know, like I'm not like the classic like polish making,
• 5:48
  the potato vodka whatever, you know, Like I have other friends that
• 5:54
  they have that kind of like, uh, you know, I got lefsa
• 5:58
  and ludofisc and all that good stuff, but beyond that, you eat n
• 6:02
  get drunk. Yeah, that's true. Aquavi is a Scandinavian basically like the
• 6:08
  Scandinavian version of vodka, my favorite drink of all time. It tasts like
• 6:13
  gin almost yeah, but like but it's kind of like vodka in a way
• 6:17
  too. My favorite cocktail ever was an Aqua cocktail out of Duluth, Minnesota,
• 6:24
  Okay, at Vikra Distillery And for a very limited time, it was
• 6:30
  like a little seasonal thing that they did a few years ago. For a
• 6:31
  very limited time, they did this drink where it was it was a pina
• 6:36
  colada, but like a spinoff of that where instead of uh so for the
• 6:42
  sweetener, they used jerk spices, like Caribbean jerk spices but in a syrup
• 6:47
  okay, and then they also added you know, like the coconut milk,
• 6:54
  and then aquavi as the spirit, and it to this day is my favorite
• 6:59
  drink of all time. It was incredible. That sounds good. I mean,
• 7:04
  yeah, I try anything once. You know. Let's let's rock and
• 7:06
  roll. That's right, that's all that's all over the place with with drink
• 7:11
  flavors. But I didn't bring you on here, mate to talk about alcohol,
• 7:15
  dude, I'll talk about anything. I love chit chat, yeah,
• 7:19
  man, dude, Okay, just so our listeners know, what would I
• 7:24
  mean, like list off some of the albums that you've worked on, because
• 7:27
  I think that you know, the people that in the music industry that do
• 7:30
  not get enough credit or then enough spotlight are the people who actually make the
• 7:36
  records, not like actually play on it necessarily, although sometimes you guys do
• 7:40
  that too, but like, yeah, the people behind the scenes that are
• 7:43
  that are doing the vast majority of the work to actually track that thing.
• 7:46
  So would you would you just mind like sharing? Yeah? Sure, sure,
• 7:50
  And a lot of times the albums that we love the most are really
• 7:55
  because we like that producer. We just don't know about that. Yeah,
• 7:59
  that's that is can certainly be the case. I you know it, it
• 8:03
  really depends on the project and like sometimes it depends on like the style of
• 8:09
  producing the producer does. But yeah, so I would categorize myself as a
• 8:15
  very heavy handed producer almost every album I would like list off that people would
• 8:20
  know I have like a lot to do with the album. That has been
• 8:24
  the path that I've found to be the most I guess, the most lucrative
• 8:30
  and the most like successful for me. So I'm trying to think of,
• 8:35
  like who you guys have probably talked to, so I know, like you
• 8:39
  talked to Shane from Everything in Slow Motion. That's a record I'm extremely proud
• 8:43
  of and that's actually probably one of the records I have the least footprint on.
• 8:46
  I still have a lot to do with, like especially how that record
• 8:50
  sounds and like feels. But I think there's maybe only like two or three
• 8:56
  guitar parts I played on the whole record, which is like crazy easy,
• 9:01
  uncommon for me, dad, So that is a record that that I just
• 9:07
  think it's a criminally underknown band and like and record before that. So I've
• 9:13
  done like Comrades, uh, and I did like Household and then I I've
• 9:20
  worked with and played with my Epic for a long time, so I've worked
• 9:22
  on like their last few records. Who else should I do? Obviously,
• 9:30
  I guess most recently the Becoming the archetype record that came out this year.
• 9:35
  That was a I mean, that's a hole insane can of worms to talk
• 9:39
  about. That made my top ten lists this year. I love it,
• 9:43
  love it, love it, love it. Thank you. Yeah, It's
• 9:46
  a record that we worked on very hard and was easily the hardest record I've
• 9:50
  ever made, like by a long margin. Do you want to expand on
• 9:56
  that a little bit? I'm kind of curious why that was sure yeah,
• 9:58
  we we can. We can talk about that record. That's that's like I
• 10:01
  said, it's a cannon worms because it's like how inside baseball do we really
• 10:07
  go? But I mean, I'm down to the whole project is very strange.
• 10:11
  So I worked with I've worked with Jason the vocalist, and I've done
• 10:18
  the last well, I did the entire Melancholy Machines record, and then I
• 10:22
  worked on the other one as a producer, but I did not like mix
• 10:28
  whatever that one's called. I don't remember the second one, the second one
• 10:33
  of three. So we had a really good We loved working together on Melancholy
• 10:37
  Machines. And that's another one of my favorite records I've ever done. And
• 10:41
  it's like and we established a rhythm Jason and I because it was basically just
• 10:46
  us, and we had like the his live drummer came in and played for
• 10:50
  like I guess probably like half the record. He played that, and then
• 10:54
  I played the other half on drums, and then like I played all the
• 10:58
  bass and did like all the programming. And Jason was really more of a
• 11:03
  producer on I mean, obviously he did all the vocals and wrote all the
• 11:09
  wrote all the lyrics, and everything, but he really took the role of
• 11:13
  producer on the Melancholy Machines record, and so we sort of developed this rhythm
• 11:20
  of like he was happy to just like hands off a lot of it as
• 11:24
  far as like, you know, I was writing, like he came and
• 11:30
  probably brought like half that record like idea wise, and then I wrote the
• 11:35
  other half like kind of started those ideas, and so we just sort of
• 11:41
  gotten to this like this sort of collaborative flow that we've sort of remained in
• 11:46
  since that has happened. We're always working on something, and so the while
• 11:52
  we were working on that record, the idea of becoming the Archetype started to
• 11:56
  float around, which has basically been like that proper reunion of like the original
• 12:03
  band has been like floating in the ether for like, you know, years,
• 12:11
  a decade at least. It's like every year is like a check in
• 12:13
  of like, oh, we could do maybe we get together, maybe we
• 12:16
  do this, maybe write some of our music. Whatever. So finally,
• 12:20
  I think when Jason I were really in a flow together and we started like
• 12:24
  talking, I think we found that we had so much in common as far
• 12:28
  as like, you know, what what excited us about music? And like
• 12:31
  shared tastes and like albums and stuff that we were just like yeah, I
• 12:37
  was just like, yeah, we could do this, you know, like
• 12:39
  like we we could, we could, uh, we could kind of start
• 12:43
  to get something rolling. And Seth the other the the guy who's basically been
• 12:48
  in the band the longest, the person who's like remained in that band through
• 12:54
  everything, and then Duck the original drummer. We're all sort of like brought
• 12:58
  in and they all they were always kind of like available, but there's one
• 13:03
  factor that always sort of kept them like, you know, sort of on
• 13:09
  the whims of of fate a little bit in the sense that yet that maybe
• 13:22
  that maybe had some factor, but it's I will say like they they they
• 13:28
  handle their political you know sort of like differences in a very like elegant way
• 13:35
  told like surprisingly I think. But all that to say, they always were
• 13:41
  rotating their primary songwriter from a music standpoint um, And what I mean by
• 13:48
  that is like their first record was written together, but John Starr, their
• 13:54
  lead guitarists, was the one bringing the most to the table so far as
• 14:00
  guitar riffs and whatever. Not to say that the other guys weren't bringing stuff
• 14:03
  as just like there was one. There's always every band is like this.
• 14:07
  There's somebody who really can take control of the song and ideas and and like
• 14:13
  make them and sometimes as a producer. And that's why I can live is
• 14:18
  because sometimes people need that. And so all that to say, they've sort
• 14:24
  of lacked that person. They had Daniel Gaily like was the last guy to
• 14:28
  do to be in that role. And then obviously he's moved on to Piper
• 14:31
  King and he's in Phineas and all this other stuff, and so Dan was
• 14:37
  not available other than to play one solo on the record. He's just too
• 14:41
  busy with like other more important stuff. So it's like I really had to
• 14:46
  step into that role. And that meant like trying to really boil down what
• 14:54
  made that band tick and what made that band like what like what you know,
• 14:58
  because I was a fan of that band in like the mid two thousands,
• 15:03
  What did I like about them? What do people remember about them?
• 15:07
  Like what records are viewed favorably, what records are not. I had my
• 15:11
  own take on that, and then like you know, the band internally has
• 15:16
  their own take on that, and obviously fans have their own take. So
• 15:20
  as a producer and now the lead guitarist, primary guitar you know, like
• 15:26
  writer for the band. It's just like this, like Okay, I've got
• 15:31
  to soak all this up. I've got to try to like translate all the
• 15:33
  things that make the band really like powerful and good, and it just becomes
• 15:39
  it became this massive project and it's like and and just shaking the rust off
• 15:46
  this band that really only existed for like like that function of the band,
• 15:52
  like with Seth and Duck and Jason was was the very first record, and
• 15:58
  then the Celestial Completion record, which is like the fourth record, so it's
• 16:03
  like those are the only two times that was really the composition of the band.
• 16:07
  So there was a lot of like learning, learning the dynamic of the
• 16:15
  band and like like just coming up with ideas. So I would say that
• 16:21
  there's probably like four four or five songs started with like Seth's like really really
• 16:30
  really rudimentary demo, like you know, like Seth is not a technology guy,
• 16:36
  and he's not he's not He's never had to refine a demo into anything
• 16:40
  because it's always like Okay, I'll bring this to the band and then we'll
• 16:42
  like we'll start riffing and it'll like, you know, we'll chisel away at
• 16:47
  it. But because it was also the pandemic, it was like we were
• 16:49
  just doing things kind of from a distance, and then we booked. This
• 16:52
  is when I was working out of the old gloom, the dark space in
• 16:57
  sort of like this neighborhood called a little five Points. It's really small studio,
• 17:02
  but a really cool studio. And um, yeah, so it was
• 17:04
  just like writing riffs, you know, being like, do you guys think
• 17:08
  this is a cool vibe? Do you guys think this is a cool vibe?
• 17:11
  Like what about this? Here's Seth's original idea. How about we express
• 17:17
  it like this? And just like you know, changing because Seth has,
• 17:21
  with a few exceptions, basically never been the guy who's recorded the guitar on
• 17:26
  their albums. He's just not well, it's and this is really common.
• 17:30
  I think maybe people don't realize how common it is. For here's the best
• 17:33
  guitarist in the band. He plays all the guitar on the record, you
• 17:37
  know what I mean, all the rhythm guitar and whatever. So Seth had
• 17:41
  always done like the keyboards and stuff on the record and like written all that
• 17:45
  stuff. But yeah, as far as like a lot, like in studio
• 17:49
  guitar playing, it usually fell on the you know, it's why like metal
• 17:53
  records sound tight, It's because it's one guy just doubling himself all the time.
• 17:57
  So yeah, So there was this ass of undertaking of like learning what
• 18:02
  made what was gonna make the band good, translating the existing ideas into something
• 18:07
  that, especially something that felt like it was gonna work in twenty twenty two.
• 18:11
  That was the really really really hard part. It's like this record has
• 18:15
  to go out to a totally different like music landscape than before. So it
• 18:23
  was just a really really really challenging like process, and it was there was
• 18:30
  a lot of frustration with everyone of just like feeling you know, I think
• 18:36
  there was there was a lot of like friction with like, oh this this
• 18:38
  sounds like you know, we don't want to sound like that kind of band
• 18:41
  or whatever, and it's like, okay, well we'll dial that back,
• 18:45
  but we also can't it can't sound like Living Sacrifice because no one is even
• 18:48
  gonna know like I know, you guys like that, but no one is
• 18:52
  gonna know that reference. Yes, you know what I mean, Like that's
• 18:55
  exactly a set thing. Sorry, Seth but nobody knows who that is anymore.
• 19:00
  Yeah, And it was like date, dude, they straight up haven't
• 19:02
  listened to metal in fifteen years, you know what I mean. Like we
• 19:07
  gathered that from our from our episode of them as well, right, yeah,
• 19:11
  they're they're a we like we know a ton about new music, about
• 19:15
  old music, yeah, but like basically nothing after nineteen ninety eight. Yeah,
• 19:21
  And like I took so much of that as inspiration. I think the
• 19:25
  biggest discovery for me and inspiration was Opath, which I had for like missed
• 19:32
  somehow, Like I don't know how. I mean, I'm like not metal
• 19:34
  is not my thing like in general, but I've like really gotten into like
• 19:40
  metal records and bands like throughout time, you know, just like something will
• 19:44
  hit you in the right way. And like I got into they were like
• 19:48
  yeah, like Opeth is a big one. I was like, well,
• 19:48
  I never really listened to them, and then I was just like pull is
• 19:52
  so sick like so that I mean, there's definitely stuff on the record which
• 19:57
  is me discovering Peth and trying to like ad that. Like I think like
• 20:03
  the like the song the calling that riff is like straight up like me going
• 20:07
  like Okay, Oh, peth Is is badass, and I'm gonna, like,
• 20:11
  I'm gonna try to like get some of that juice going. So I
• 20:17
  love that you kind of like went through like that that process a little bit.
• 20:19
  Is it? Is it sometimes frustrating knowing that you're not necessarily going to
• 20:26
  be the name recognized behind a lot of that stuff. In the past,
• 20:30
  I would have said like sort of definitively no, But I think I've been
• 20:34
  doing it for long enough now that there is a little bit of like,
• 20:37
  all right, I need to. I think more than that, I've felt
• 20:42
  that I need to. I need to really put like, yeah, put
• 20:48
  my put my own music out. Put put something out that's like I'm that
• 20:53
  I'm really responsible for. Yeah, there he is count Lord of Death.
• 21:00
  Are you Are you still driving? I am still driving. You can see
• 21:04
  the lines going in front of me. This is illegal? Uh yeah,
• 21:08
  yeah, it sounds like a communist thing to do. I'm not gonna I'm
• 21:12
  not gonna mark on you though. Hey, Seth, we were just talking
• 21:17
  shit about you. First off, you don't record, you don't you are
• 21:22
  not the guitarists and all of the becoming the archetype albums and We just wanted
• 21:26
  to, you know, make sure are you really a communist? Am I
• 21:30
  that communist? Yeah? If you're a real communist, I would give credit
• 21:33
  where credit is due, right, yeah, are you are you using somebody
• 21:37
  else's labor as your own? I think it's more democratic socialists, so uh,
• 21:45
  you know vote Yeah, well it's a it's uh, you know,
• 21:49
  the the money and the finances go to the workers, to democratic democratic good
• 21:55
  assign how it's used. So we we split the publishing evenly, you know,
• 21:59
  right, Yeah, my labor was not alienated in this process, and
• 22:02
  honestly it's more of a to each according to his ability type of situation.
• 22:06
  You know. There you go. Mark said that, and the exact copying
• 22:10
  the Apostle Paul from each according to their tames. Practically Marx is just like
• 22:17
  copying scripture and the Manifestio. I mean, this is not that com for
• 22:21
  virtual guys, unless you're not Christians, which I don't know, maybe you're
• 22:23
  not, but yeah, if if you're not, If if people are listening
• 22:30
  to UH to the children are the Great Extinction and not getting the influence of
• 22:36
  Marx and Ingles on the UH on the project, and they're they're missing out
• 22:41
  man. This is this is fully fully bread booked like that. The album
• 22:47
  is basically bread booked Volume two. Oh, Jason's gonna be so pissed.
• 22:52
  He yeah, he's not here too, He's not here to rebuttal against it.
• 23:00
  You got the two leftists from the band right now. Yeah. I
• 23:03
  was gonna say, you really got a skewed representation of the band because Duck
• 23:06
  Whoops were to be on the other side probably politically, and Jason would be
• 23:11
  definitely different than us, if not, you know, on the other side.
• 23:15
  So yeah, you got you got the leftist tonight. That's all right
• 23:18
  with us. I mean, I mean Nathan Nate's already even got like the
• 23:22
  marks. Look, you know with his beard, he just got away.
• 23:26
  Yeah, Salt Pepperwell, can we introduce you as that at the show,
• 23:29
  Nate, we have a new guitarist, Karl Mark. Karl Mark, you
• 23:34
  come out with a book in your head, just as Dusk Coppy Tall.
• 23:37
  Yeah. Absolutely absolutely, that's what the that's what the people want. At
• 23:44
  the August Burns Read concert. I think you do know that, like Silent
• 23:49
  Planet has openly socialist members in the right. Yes, those are all those
• 23:53
  are all like my good, my good buddies for sure. Oh good,
• 23:56
  okay, yeah all right, well Seth, Um, we don't we don't
• 24:00
  want you to leave, but bugger off now so we can. Ye.
• 24:06
  I'm sorry. You guys gotta ask Nate cool stuff about production and stuff.
• 24:08
  So I'll let you guys have the conversation, right. Hey, man,
• 24:11
  it was a good cameo. Thanks for coming on. Sure, I'll see
• 24:15
  you at noon, Saith. Yeah, I'll see at noon tomorrow. See
• 24:21
  you. Sorry. I texted Seth and I said, hey, come join
• 24:23
  the zoom link because it would be Yeah, yeah, I was, I
• 24:27
  started I started laughing at that. Um, I don't I don't remember where
• 24:33
  we are when we're talking about that. But any all that to say,
• 24:36
  I guess the takeaway is that it was a process of me assimilating to what
• 24:42
  the band needed to be and how and how to translate there they're raw,
• 24:49
  like what what really makes the band special? How to make that fit in
• 24:55
  now like in twenty twenty two, and that and that was it just was
• 24:59
  not It was way harder than I thought it was going to be, you
• 25:02
  know, because I just I've done I feel like I've done that before.
• 25:04
  But maybe this was the most like fish out of water experience. But I'm
• 25:11
  really proud of a lot of the a lot of what's on that record,
• 25:17
  and especially like guitar stuff. There's stuff on there that is like some ideas
• 25:22
  I've had for so long, and like just riffs that I think work really
• 25:25
  well. So okay, So now that we've appeased the three becoming the archetype
• 25:30
  fans, I'm I am really curious, just because I'm the person who like
• 25:38
  edits the podcast and puts it out there in the world. Yeah, I've
• 25:42
  always been really curious about this, what is the difference between producing, mixing,
• 25:48
  and mastering because we hear it all the time when we interview artists.
• 25:52
  I feel like, in some way, shape or form, when I'm messing
• 25:56
  around with this podcast, I kind of get like a little glimpse into all
• 26:00
  of those. But I have no idea how each one of those are different
• 26:03
  and what's involved in each one of those. So could you talk a little
• 26:07
  bit about what is each one of those and how are they different from each
• 26:11
  other? Yeah, I'll just I'll start by saying the the sort of delineation
• 26:18
  of all these roles has shrunk in the sense that, like in the nineteen
• 26:22
  sixties, you would have somebody different that does every different little thing, you
• 26:27
  know, and then that that goes up to you know, the basically the
• 26:30
  early two thousands, which is like the peak of the music industry. And
• 26:36
  so you have the role of a producer, an engineer, a mixing engineer
• 26:42
  or mixer, and a mastering engineer. And all of these roles are different
• 26:51
  but are often now done by the same person. So you would start,
• 26:56
  let's start with just a blanket engineer. Strictly speaking, when someone's talking about
• 27:03
  like engineering a record, they're really just talking about like putting the mics in
• 27:08
  front of the guitar cab or pointing them might get a snare drum, and
• 27:11
  routing that into whatever system they're using a record, whether it's a super simple
• 27:18
  situation where it's just going into like an audio interface like boop dum oh that's
• 27:22
  on the computer done, or like a mixing console like what I have here,
• 27:26
  Like I have mixing console and outboard gear and like all this other stuff,
• 27:30
  and it's like way more complicated, And I have a tape machine.
• 27:33
  If we wanted to do on a tape, we could do, you know,
• 27:34
  So like that's engineer that's just strictly, I'm going to take this thing
• 27:40
  where you move sound waves throughout reality, and I'm going to use technology to
• 27:45
  capture it and put it onto a recorded media. That's what an engineer does.
• 27:49
  A producer is a is a is a person who may be engineering the
• 27:57
  record, may be in charge of engineers, but really they're working on the
• 28:03
  song level. So someone a band or an artist or whoever, is going
• 28:07
  to come to a producer with an idea or a song or a fully fleshed
• 28:12
  out demo that could basically be released, and then it's the producer's job,
• 28:17
  and it's the artist's job to select the right person and hire the person they
• 28:21
  really trust. It's the producer's job to make some decisions or guide the artist.
• 28:27
  I mean, it's it's such a broad definition. It's the most hard
• 28:30
  to like pin down like what a producer does, because like, like and
• 28:34
  that's why I like, at the top of the podcast, I was saying
• 28:37
  something about, like my production style is really heavy handed, just because like,
• 28:41
  like so we've talked about Matt Goldman for a minute. Like Goldman is
• 28:45
  an amazing engineer, and he's taught me essentially everything I really know about engineering
• 28:52
  and his production style is that he is a producer that will help the band,
• 28:56
  like make decisions and refine parts like this part's too long, you don't
• 29:00
  need to do that four times. That's we're done with that. Two times
• 29:03
  is good, or like you need another chorus, this song is not working
• 29:08
  without that. He'll make he'll he'll absolutely do those sort of things. But
• 29:11
  his goal really is to take a good band and make them sound great on
• 29:17
  a recording. You know, we're gonna make sure your guitars sound amazing,
• 29:21
  capture great performances and and um, you know, just make sure you translate
• 29:26
  to this recording in the best possible way. I'm not the guy. He's
• 29:30
  the guy, but he's not playing on the albums except for David de Lahoes
• 29:34
  with the Chariot. Yeah, true, Yeah, I mean he can get
• 29:41
  super heavy handed, like what like when I've worked with him and Josh on
• 29:45
  a few things, like right when I started, and like when him and
• 29:48
  Josh get together, it's just like play you know, playhouse time, you
• 29:52
  know, like they do crazy stuff where he's like I don't even know where
• 29:56
  we're headed, you know, which is very different from Matt. Like Matt
• 30:00
  can totally hang in that environment. But it's just he became known for doing
• 30:06
  a certain thing, for making bands sound great and for capturing good performances,
• 30:11
  which is a really big element of production where it's like, hey, I'm
• 30:15
  gonna I know when you've played it right. I know when you've sang it
• 30:18
  right. And that's why bands can also produce themselves, because sometimes the band
• 30:23
  will know that better than anyone, Like this is the take, that's the
• 30:27
  take, It's done, you know, like that's the right take, this
• 30:30
  is the right way to perform this or whatever. So the answer of the
• 30:34
  producer is really is pretty complicated. Then when we get into mixing, you
• 30:40
  have the song is completed, the producer's done everything, and now we need
• 30:45
  to balance all the tracks, equalize the tracks so that like they don't the
• 30:51
  frequencies, the frequencies don't fight with each other, and the instruments can be
• 30:53
  clearly heard. And then sometimes it gets a lot more creative than that,
• 30:57
  you know, like I like I am always making really like hot takes and
• 31:04
  trying to accomplish things with mixing that are more on the production side. Um,
• 31:10
  and uh, you know I don't. Yeah, I've always I feel
• 31:12
  like I'm always making weird decisions for better or worse with mixing, I don't
• 31:17
  know. And mixing is is another thing that can be really creative or can
• 31:21
  be really focused. Um. And then mastering is I like to think of
• 31:26
  mastering historically as preparing your your music for production. So it used to be
• 31:37
  we get, um, a giant reel of tape that has your music on
• 31:41
  it, and now we are going to make that go onto a vinyl record.
• 31:45
  That used to be what mastering really was. And there would be like
• 31:48
  equipment that they use then to sort of like do the final compression so that
• 31:52
  that needle literally doesn't jump off the lave or whatever when they're when they're actually
• 31:57
  producing the master vinyl. UM. Obviously that's not totally the case. I
• 32:04
  still hire a mastering engineer to do that when it when it goes like not
• 32:09
  when I'm working with a label, because they will they have their own process
• 32:13
  for doing that. Um. But if it's an independent band, I will
• 32:15
  be like, oh, we're going to my guy, and he doesn't amazing
• 32:17
  The dude's a wizard on the lathe, you know, and he like does
• 32:22
  an amazing job. And I'm very proud of those projects because like like a
• 32:24
  Listener, that's a great example of a record that I think sounds really good
• 32:29
  on vinyl because we went with a great mastering engineer who did a really good
• 32:34
  job of like reproducing the sound. I'm glad that you brought up Listener,
• 32:37
  because that is one record or not the like Wouldn't Heart, for instance,
• 32:44
  is a record that sounds way better on vinyl. They've always had that priority.
• 32:51
  So when we so I produced that record, like Josh Skagan and I
• 32:54
  were co producers, but I engineered and mixed that record, and then I
• 33:00
  was like, I really want to go with this guy mastering wise. I
• 33:02
  think he's gonna like give us the best because we knew that record was also
• 33:07
  going to be very organic sounding, like we we we did that record in
• 33:14
  like ten days, which I don't even know that I could do anymore.
• 33:16
  Like we spent like it was like sixteen, eight eighteen hours a day just
• 33:21
  like cranking out uh that that thing and just drinking coffee like literally all day
• 33:27
  long. Um, but that record just has so many cool sounds on it,
• 33:30
  and it's like very little like mixing tricks and stuff. You know,
• 33:35
  It's just most of it was done like you know, to to tape or
• 33:39
  two pro tools. You know, most of it was done like into the
• 33:44
  track and not so much like in the box. Very cool. Um,
• 33:47
  So what do you do when you get a record that's that is really great?
• 33:52
  Songs are awesome, musicianships on point, everything's great, right, but
• 34:00
  it doesn't seem to wanna mix all that well, like like you just can't
• 34:05
  find that perfect mix, like like a great example I can think of,
• 34:07
  And this has kind of been like my UM, I don't know how much
• 34:10
  you've listened. You said you're not like a big metal fan or whatever.
• 34:14
  I don't know if you're into like he is legend or not. Yeah,
• 34:16
  I do too, but I have some qualms about some of their records in
• 34:22
  terms of production. Um. For example, I am Hollywood m their first
• 34:28
  their first full length, first full length YEP. Yeah. Musically it's a
• 34:32
  masterpiece, right, awesome, fantastic record through and through. Songs are amazing,
• 34:37
  But the mastering or is thery not the mixing or sorry not not the
• 34:40
  mastering The mixing leave some stuff to be desired, right, I mean,
• 34:46
  the bass isn't punchy, the vocals are kind of washed at times, things
• 34:52
  of that sort of I'm curious, like, is it just sometimes it doesn't
• 34:55
  quite master or not masterp say that mix quite the way you want it to,
• 35:01
  regardless of how good the songs are. So I can answer this is
• 35:07
  two questions in my mind, because I can answer the broader question or I
• 35:12
  can give my answer of the broader question. But well, if we want
• 35:15
  to talk about that specific record, I think that record and a lot of
• 35:20
  records of that era have a similar problem of budget. Right Like that was
• 35:24
  an era where digital recording, you gotta think, like pro tools became like
• 35:30
  sort of the ubiquitous thing around like a year two thousand and so, much
• 35:35
  like metal is a is a genre that clearly does sounds way worse in the
• 35:42
  analog era, right Like like go back to like older metal records and like
• 35:49
  it's just like it's so extreme. The music is so extreme that it's like
• 35:53
  it doesn't benefit from all the things that we love about analog, like tape,
• 35:58
  and like it just doesn't benefit from it. It's like all the squishiness
• 36:00
  and the like and the like detail and it's like, nah, man,
• 36:05
  it just needs to be cold, you know, like this like cold digital
• 36:08
  recording captures that stuff better for some reason. That's that's my own opinion.
• 36:15
  And so like mid two thousands, which is like right around when I started,
• 36:19
  like in I started learning you know, software recording, and also when
• 36:23
  I was like in bands. But it's like the technology was just kind of
• 36:29
  bad, like we hadn't really gotten you know, like the the great.
• 36:32
  So I mean that's that's kind of like when you when you go like a
• 36:38
  you know, like some of my favorite records, like uh, like Rich
• 36:42
  Costi, which nobody knows this guy, but Rich Gossi's like my favorite uh
• 36:46
  like mixer and producer um and so like he did like Muse and Jimmy World
• 36:52
  and Ridge against the Machine and Brand New and like Mars Volta and like all
• 36:54
  these are like my favorite records growing up and they all sound incredible, but
• 36:59
  they're all million dollar records and he's the best in the world, right,
• 37:01
  And so like to be a band that made a record for twenty grand in
• 37:06
  two thousand and five, you know, as opposed to two hundred grand or
• 37:10
  seven hundred grand or whatever, it's just like the technology wasn't there on these
• 37:16
  on these like you know, on this low end. So it's like drum
• 37:21
  sampling sounded really fakey and bad at that time and like and all this stuff.
• 37:27
  So it's just like that was an era where if you didn't have a
• 37:29
  big budget, you were not gonna get a great sounding record. And that
• 37:34
  applies for sure to hear his legend, you know, not that because I
• 37:37
  do think like I think it's not really until their third record that it sounds
• 37:42
  good to me. Yeah, and uh and that you know, so all
• 37:46
  that to say, like the technology now, it's like my opinion is right
• 37:54
  now, your record really should not sound terrible. There's not really an excuse
• 38:01
  because it's like, dude, these things will mix themselves, like you know,
• 38:06
  like there's so much technology at play now, so it's more about like
• 38:10
  choices, like you know, that's just kind of goes for everything. It's
• 38:15
  like even with's like graphic design and stuff. It's like there's no reason for
• 38:17
  it to be terrible anymore. Like it's the tools are out there, so
• 38:22
  it's just so much less of an issue now. But like to your larger
• 38:27
  point of like why does something not come together? It could be a lot
• 38:31
  of different reasons. I mean it could be somebody like somebody like me might
• 38:35
  make some crazy choice. You know, there's probably people out there who don't
• 38:39
  like some choice I made on some record because I'm usually trying to avoid some
• 38:45
  kind of trope or something, you know, like the the BTA record is
• 38:50
  a good example of like that record, That whole record has this really mid
• 38:54
  focused guitar sound, because I think mid focused guitars are more aggressive and like
• 39:01
  fun to listen to. But metal does not do that because it just doesn't
• 39:07
  sound It's just I don't know. So I did that, and it's a
• 39:10
  weird choice, and some people maybe don't like it. I dig it,
• 39:14
  man, I dig it too. It's why I did it. But I
• 39:16
  knew when I knew when I made those records that those guitars so like mid
• 39:22
  punchy, that it was not going to sound like you know you if you're
• 39:25
  going to go put on another record from that year, they weren't going to
• 39:29
  sound the same, you know. I think it gives it a using the
• 39:32
  BTAM example, I think it gives it a terminate, damnation kind of feel
• 39:37
  well. And that's that's a hundred percent why we did that, is because
• 39:42
  the conversation was like we were talking a lot about extol, which was like
• 39:46
  probably collectively the one band we all agree on. We were just like we
• 39:52
  loved Extol. We can't make a record that sounds like you know, Synergy
• 39:57
  or whatever because it's just so old school sounding. But it's like, what
• 40:01
  would what would bring us closer to that, you know, because I'm already
• 40:06
  doing things to modernize the record, but what would bring us closer that?
• 40:08
  So it's like yeah, But ultimately, it's like, the tools are there
• 40:13
  to make good sounding records even if you have no money and the resources.
• 40:16
  There's a million YouTube videos and channels and and red. You know, like,
• 40:21
  if you like metal, then go to Nail the Mix and learn how
• 40:23
  to mix from all these guys, make your records that you like, you
• 40:27
  know, And it's like almost paint by numbers at this point. So it's
• 40:30
  just like, so it's just not likely someone's gonna make something really really bad.
• 40:37
  It happens, But yeah, yeah, Cullen, I'm glad you mentioned
• 40:42
  I Am Hollywood as an album that just doesn't feel that well produced, because
• 40:46
  two years later you get what I still hear consistently from people who are big
• 40:52
  metal fans as one of the best produced metal albums, even if you compare
• 40:59
  it from two thousand and six today and that is one of Matt Goldman's albums,
• 41:02
  and that's Defined the Great Line, and you just consistently hear how well
• 41:07
  produced that is. So how do you go from an album in two thousand
• 41:10
  and four that isn't well produced, partly because of the technology, to two
• 41:16
  years later you get one of the best sounding albums that still holds up today
• 41:22
  and some people who would even say is better sounding today than some of the
• 41:27
  the metal albums that are released today. Budget that's interesting. It Like,
• 41:35
  I think, how okay, I don't know how much the the I Am
• 41:40
  Hollywood record costs. I'm gonna get twenty grand I think is a good guess
• 41:45
  for that era and for that so I'm gonna say twenty grand. They probably
• 41:50
  spent oh maybe a hundred and fifty grand on the Define the Great Line record.
• 41:57
  It was way more, yeah, for sure, way more than I
• 41:59
  think they probably spent fifty of Spittles flying um. I think they maybe spent
• 42:04
  fifty on mixing alone. Chris Lord algae at the time. I don't know
• 42:07
  what he was right was, but it's probably around fifty grand to mix the
• 42:12
  record. Forty fifty something like that, so like they spent more just on
• 42:16
  the like were and you're you're you're sort of like talking about the production and
• 42:22
  what we could talk about that, but it's just the mixing. You're getting
• 42:25
  like one of the top rock mixers period at the time and now like he's
• 42:31
  still one of the top dudes. And yeah, like they spent twice that
• 42:36
  on to get the best guy in the world to mix the record, like
• 42:40
  you know, like and then Matt Goldman obviously like what like we could talk
• 42:46
  about what his style and and how he what The thing that Matt does so
• 42:51
  well, especially to bands like that in that genre, is he adds a
• 42:55
  much needed level of like Varius militude where it's like now the record feels like
• 43:01
  honest, you know, like now all of a sudden, there's like an
• 43:06
  authenticity that doesn't really exist in that genre. Like metal is a like I
• 43:10
  said, metal is extremely cold sounding, it's extremely fake sounding. It's you
• 43:15
  know, I'm not trying to say that's in a pejorative way, it's just
• 43:17
  the reality of what you're listening to. I'm very glad you said that,
• 43:21
  because that's something that we harp on here all the time, is is the
• 43:25
  fact that so much music, not just metal, but especially in metal,
• 43:30
  you get this very cookie cuttery sound that is so frustrating because you hear really
• 43:36
  good music behind it, but it sounds so clinical, it sounds so sterile,
• 43:39
  it sounds so lifeless. Even though it is full of energy and excitement,
• 43:45
  it doesn't necessarily portray that to the listener all the time. I mean,
• 43:50
  I can name off one hundred bands right now that you fall into that
• 43:53
  kind of category. So what is it about that? How do you create
• 43:59
  that authentic city when the band would do it live but maybe not so much
• 44:04
  you know the studio or what what goes on the record? I should say
• 44:07
  it comes down to, like, so if we want to talk about define
• 44:12
  the Great Line, which I have nothing to do with, but I feel
• 44:15
  like I probably have more of a scoop on than most people. Um,
• 44:19
  but it's like a record like that. Obviously the budgets at play. Obviously
• 44:24
  Goldman has a magic touch when it comes up. But he's also not the
• 44:29
  only producer, like Adam d did like a lot of the guitars and a
• 44:34
  lot of Adam was a producer on both I Am Hollywood and To Find the
• 44:38
  Great Line, which is right, an interesting follow through there, well,
• 44:42
  and that shows you how much mixing matters, Like yeah, at that time,
• 44:45
  mixing like dude, yeah, like the difference between well like mixing,
• 44:51
  UH is like where so much of the of the the sound like I'm working
• 44:59
  with UM, I'm not, I'm not gonna go into it in detail,
• 45:02
  but like UH recently was mixing like a post rock record that was like recorded
• 45:08
  super super cheap, and and it's a it's a band, like a totally
• 45:12
  independent band that's not you know, trying to be a big band or anything,
• 45:15
  and and it's like they're they're they're like project that you know, they
• 45:21
  spent like almost no money on it, and the recording is really bad.
• 45:23
  But it's like I know, I know what post rock is supposed to sound
• 45:28
  like. And so like they had a guy, the guy that recorded it,
• 45:30
  mix it, and the guy's just like some guy that owns the studio
• 45:32
  in their hometown. Right, the mix sounds super amateur and super Yeah,
• 45:38
  it sounds like, you know, kind of like an old guy did it
• 45:42
  like on his MACKI you know, mixer or whatever, and it's just like
• 45:45
  it sounds terrible. It's like but it sounds like a million local things you've
• 45:49
  heard, Yeah, but you know, they they got it across my plate
• 45:52
  and I was like, yeah, I know what this is supposed to sound
• 45:54
  like, So I can work the kind of cruddy like sounding tracks into something
• 46:01
  that sounds to them like that's what they wanted to sound like, you know.
• 46:06
  So it's like so much of it comes down to the taste of the
• 46:10
  of the the people who who are like, uh involved in really shaping the
• 46:17
  final form of what the record sounds like. And it's weird because the thing
• 46:23
  that Matt Goldman touched on in the mid two thousands was that, like maybe
• 46:28
  the some of the best people for the job are people who aren't have no
• 46:31
  affinity for that type of music, you know, like because it's like you
• 46:37
  grow up playing metal and you have like X y Z references and things you
• 46:40
  love, and it's like, yeah, metal kind of sounded terrible for forever,
• 46:45
  Like it sounded really bad, like all of you the eighty you know,
• 46:47
  like what the exception of like maybe like uh, you know, Master
• 46:52
  Puppets and some stuff that like really does kind of hold up. So yeah,
• 46:57
  those records sound sound good. We can say that, like, but
• 47:00
  yeah, like everyone below that it's not not great, so you know,
• 47:05
  a sacrifice for example. You know, yeah, records don't sound great.
• 47:07
  No, it comes down to that budget thing. Yeah, but but it's
• 47:10
  all yeah. So it's like Matt touched on this saying where he was just
• 47:15
  like a different he just you know, some people still think like, oh,
• 47:19
  Matt must love heavy dude, he likes the beat The Beatles. All
• 47:23
  we talk about are like, you know, we we like Matt and I
• 47:28
  we connect on you know, like when we met, you know, he
• 47:32
  was like about to go to an Arcade Fire concert. That's like one of
• 47:37
  his favorite bands. He loves Arcade Fire loves you know. He he introduced
• 47:39
  me to the Wan Drugs, which is like one of my favorite bands now.
• 47:44
  Um, and it's like, yeah, he doesn't like any of this
• 47:45
  stuff. Like people are like, yeah, you you know, it's like
• 47:49
  I remember, like there was some conversation like when he was working, uh
• 47:52
  with like Daniel Davidson, which he's he's recorded multiple times, but on like
• 47:55
  the under Oath record, and he was just like, dude, I never
• 47:59
  listened to any I don't know what Norma Gene sounds like, even though he's
• 48:01
  recorded all those guys he doesn't know what it's like. He just like is
• 48:05
  good at his job, you know, and like and he's so good at
• 48:07
  like at capturing performances and getting the best stuff. And it's and you know,
• 48:13
  we early on we were talking about the power of like the hang and
• 48:16
  being a good hang, and it's like, did that's h factor? Like
• 48:20
  he like people come in and then they connect, you know, he connects
• 48:23
  with all these bands and it's like it doesn't matter, you know, it
• 48:27
  doesn't matter if the band is good or or you like their music or whatever.
• 48:30
  It's like you've connected and now you're gonna work really hard to make him
• 48:32
  sound amazing. How is he able to give these as a producer, give
• 48:38
  the sort of ideas And I think you mentioned before, like you know,
• 48:42
  he was a little bit more hands off with that, but to a certain
• 48:45
  degree, there's certainly a level of hey, maybe you should do this,
• 48:49
  or maybe you should do that. How is he able to do that with
• 48:52
  metal bands that he clearly is not listening to. Well, and you yourself,
• 48:55
  I mean, you're you're like in that same conversation because we've heard music
• 49:00
  from you that is falling in that same footstep that those same lines. Yeah,
• 49:06
  I don't want to paint the picture that I don't like. I grew
• 49:09
  up like one of the first big bands I was in, Big, not
• 49:16
  big, one of the my first couple bands that I was really serious about
• 49:20
  when I was young, or like both in the you know, one sounded
• 49:22
  a lot like as Cities Burn, and then one sounded like chasing Victory stuff
• 49:28
  like that, right, Like, so it's like I'm I'm in the I'm
• 49:30
  adjacent to all that stuff. I just didn't grow up I grew up you
• 49:35
  know, listening to like not there was no for some reason, like my
• 49:38
  high school, no one listened to like any screamy heavy music. It just
• 49:43
  wasn't a thing. So I just like, where'd you go to high school?
• 49:45
  Uh, rose Mount High suburb of Minneapolis. They didn't listen to any
• 49:52
  of that through huh. I just I don't know why. It's just like,
• 49:53
  you know, it's funny because like where my wife grew up, which
• 49:57
  is like basically the opposite side of the city, on the north side,
• 50:00
  I grew up on the south side of it, so that, you know,
• 50:02
  and it's like, yeah, like we we ended up playing a million
• 50:06
  shows out there and they loved that kind of stuff. So I don't know
• 50:07
  why. Like the little weird, little you know, like yuppie suburb I
• 50:13
  lived in, it was like people just loved like, you know, like
• 50:15
  I loved Copeland. I love like the Death Cab for Cutie, Like that
• 50:19
  was like, that's that's my connection with Goldman, Like Goldman was this hero
• 50:24
  figure to me because like Copeland was one of my favorite bands. I loved
• 50:28
  on Athalo and he did that first an Athalo record, and like I was
• 50:31
  just like so into like these indie rock records that he made. And then
• 50:36
  like it wasn't till like, yeah, it wasn't till way later that I
• 50:39
  had heard the Define the Great Line thing because it's like my roommates were like
• 50:45
  into it and I was like, oh, that's Matt Goleman, Like yeah,
• 50:46
  that's that dude. But all that to say, yeah, so different
• 50:52
  music background, I am very much. I'm a music musician first, so
• 50:57
  whereas like Matt is a really good drummer, but he would never call himself
• 51:02
  a musician first. He is a producer, engineer. That is his that
• 51:07
  is his superpower for sure. So I I have a different way of like
• 51:13
  weasling into projects and that's why, like there's almost no record I've made that
• 51:17
  I haven't played on, like like I would say, I'm trying to even
• 51:23
  think of one. I don't. I don't know there isn't. I don't
• 51:25
  know if there is one. Like it's it's common for me to play like
• 51:30
  a ton of guitar, sometimes all the bass, sometimes drums. I've had
• 51:35
  to. I've literally like done the drum like recorded the drummer and then finished
• 51:40
  tracking with the band and then send him home and then I rerecord all the
• 51:44
  drums. I've done stuff like that. So you did the get Dave girl,
• 51:46
  You did the Dave Girl, that's what you did. Yeah, I've
• 51:50
  done, dude, I've done. Tell them about that, Uh, depends
• 51:54
  on the band. Um, I think know as you you sounded that good.
• 52:02
  They're most bands know now if I'm close to them, if if like
• 52:07
  you know, which is I become really close to most bands I work with.
• 52:10
  But like a good example would be like Empty Um, They're Yeah,
• 52:15
  they're a band that I definitely re recorded all the drums. Actually, gold
• 52:21
  I got Goldman to play on a couple of those songs too, but I
• 52:24
  didn't tell the band to like way later and it was like, hey,
• 52:28
  just so you guys know, just think I bet Gary would have been okay
• 52:30
  with it. At least Gary has nothing has nothing really to do with it
• 52:35
  because like he you know, he's a vocalist. Season really Carey's the only
• 52:38
  one that we know like somewhat well so yeah, and Gary's kind of the
• 52:43
  only guy in the band like sort of like it's weird. I mean,
• 52:49
  there's been some roade. I mean, let's not talk about empty. There's
• 52:51
  a million Empties are crazy another canon Worms, But anyway, all they say,
• 52:57
  I feel like I'm way far away from the question, but the question
• 53:00
  being how how do we how do we like work with genres we don't know
• 53:07
  or like yeah, can you remember how you were? Question? I'm like
• 53:14
  in the weeds on it. Yeah, well so Goldman being a person who
• 53:20
  we know for writing or producing all these really heavy albums, but yeah,
• 53:27
  being a person that doesn't really listen to that kind of stuff, I'm so
• 53:30
  interested, like how is he able to make decisions around hey, you should
• 53:35
  do this and this and this to this song even though he really doesn't listen
• 53:38
  to that kind of music, Like, you know, when it comes to
• 53:40
  define the great line to me, a perfect album the way through, perfectly
• 53:45
  produced, perfectly mixed, and yet Goldman has at least some level of input
• 53:52
  into it. I don't know how much, but has some level of input,
• 53:54
  and yet that's not the kind of band that he would listen to.
• 53:58
  I find that so interesting. There is a good producer, and that you'll
• 54:04
  hear this all throughout the industry. A good producer develops a method of and
• 54:13
  I don't have a great way to express this idea, but they're going to
• 54:19
  develop a distinct sense of like imprint that is sort of not based on genre
• 54:30
  or like anything like that. I mean all like, I think you would
• 54:34
  maybe have a harder time if it was a band that was like completely divorced
• 54:38
  from like traditional songwriting like structure. That would be more challenging. If it
• 54:45
  was just like all of our songs are, like you know, if it
• 54:50
  was like a Captain Beefheart type situation. How do you produce something that's just
• 54:53
  like chaos and like has no structure or whatever. You know, Like so
• 54:59
  most music has a you know, like has has similar structures, like they're
• 55:04
  not it's not always the same, but it's like you can tell, you
• 55:07
  know, even if even if a song doesn't have choruses, you can tell
• 55:12
  what is special about the certain moment. And and there are times where like
• 55:16
  a genre goes beyond your ability as a producer, and then you kind of
• 55:21
  like if you're smart, you just sort of like get away from the project
• 55:24
  or like let it go and say like, yeah, you know, honestly,
• 55:27
  I'm not the guy. But I think when it comes down to a
• 55:31
  lot of those stuff that Goldman is you know, famous for, it's uh,
• 55:37
  it's stuff that still exists within within the like confines of like normal you
• 55:43
  know, popular music. Like it's not like, you know, it's like
• 55:45
  all all that underreall stuff is core has choruses and has like you know,
• 55:51
  here's the big you know this, this whole song leads up to this moment.
• 55:53
  Okay, you know I don't have to totally This doesn't have to be
• 55:58
  on my favorite genre to understand it. That is how it works, and
• 56:00
  that that moment has to work. So I think it's a little I'm not
• 56:05
  gonna say it's reductive to think of it that way, but it's just a
• 56:07
  way that you, as a producer, you learn to think about the songs
• 56:10
  outside of all of all the like you know, you're you're more kind of
• 56:15
  like X raying into it and understanding it on a different level. So I'm
• 56:20
  gonna I mean, you use the example of Goldman, but again, this
• 56:22
  is beyond Goldman. This is not a Goldman episode. Maybe we can do
• 56:25
  that later. He has produced Copeland and he has produced The Chariot. Sure,
• 56:31
  Copeland being a band that could have very easily become a radio hit.
• 56:37
  I think they tried for sure. Yeah, and you have a band like
• 56:39
  The Chariot where you get two minutes and it's a cloud of dust and it's
• 56:45
  like everything that you can think of in two minutes, very very different.
• 56:50
  How has you as a producer or are you able to like make both of
• 56:53
  those work? I like, as much as you're like, oh yeah,
• 56:58
  like it's you know, at the end of the day, it's like it's
• 57:00
  a pop song for the for Copeland and under Oath, Well, the Cherry
• 57:02
  and Copeland are way very different. And I'm sure that's the thing. I'm
• 57:07
  very like, I find that so interesting that a producer can do that anti
• 57:12
  melody, anti chorus. Yeah, And so like, how has you,
• 57:16
  Nate Washburn, how do you do that well? I think an important factor
• 57:22
  is this goes back to the human element of can you find like like,
• 57:31
  well, okay, we'll use your two examples, and I'll start off by
• 57:37
  saying it really helps when the band is good. Most of the band's Goldman
• 57:42
  works with are good. I don't necessarily always have that in the pocket,
• 57:46
  you know, Like I feel like a lot of times I end up getting
• 57:51
  a project. Now, I'm not trying to like throw a shade on any
• 57:53
  band or whatever. It's just like I'm I'm known, like a lot of
• 57:58
  projects have come across my play I'm known as the guy who will like that
• 58:02
  guy can kind of just play all the stuff if you need him to or
• 58:05
  whatever. You know, Like I kind of have that schaeffer who has his
• 58:07
  own his own Yes, he says the exact same thing exactly. So there's
• 58:14
  not everybody has a lecture of Matt Coleman recording really good bands. So that
• 58:17
  means that that does seem to be the like, you know, to record,
• 58:21
  like to produce for Aaron Marsh and to produce for Josh Goggin. It
• 58:24
  doesn't matter the genre and how different they are from each other. When you
• 58:28
  have Aaron Marsh and Josh Goggin, you really can't go wrong Matt. Matt
• 58:32
  has recorded bad bands and it's not great, like you know, because he
• 58:37
  doesn't go in and save them like you know. So if you're terrible and
• 58:40
  you want Matt to make your record, he might say no, like that's
• 58:44
  definitely an option. Um but yeah, or it's just like kind of a
• 58:47
  dud, you know, like that's totally possible. But I will say this,
• 58:51
  I think because this is one of the missing ingredients. The Chariot is
• 58:54
  and Josh is a good example of this. Uh and and Aaron like they
• 59:01
  like Okay, Copeland winds up recording with Matt because Matt records this band called
• 59:07
  Luxury, and Copeland's a big fan of Luxury. Right, So now you
• 59:12
  have this connection. I dig that you made this. I like that.
• 59:15
  Oh this guy's here, he's not that far, you know, he's like
• 59:16
  six hours from wherever they live. Let's do that. That would be awesome.
• 59:21
  We're inspired by their record. So that's there. Now you have a
• 59:23
  connection, and then you know, you start talking, you meet the band.
• 59:27
  Oh we like this, we like Now we can start referencing. It
• 59:30
  doesn't have to be the you know, your favorite genre or something. You
• 59:34
  totally understand every goal of the band, but now you you you start to
• 59:37
  connect the dots weirdly enough, like somebody like Josh like has so many of
• 59:45
  the same connections, you know, like like okay, like there's this band,
• 59:51
  John Spencer's Blues Explosion, right like and if you've seen any Edgar Wright
• 59:55
  movies, you've heard this, Yeah, sure, right, and it's like
• 59:59
  this super like Josh is obsessed with this music. Like once you know,
• 1:00:05
  you're like, dude, holy shit, like this dude loves this because it's
• 1:00:09
  like all the really weird stuff where you'd think like how did he ever think
• 1:00:14
  to do that? Or like the song just like cuts in this weird spot.
• 1:00:16
  It's like that's all in there. It's all in there. So it's
• 1:00:21
  like and Matt loves that, Josh loves that, they like they love talking
• 1:00:24
  about it. There's a million of those connections happening. So it's like once
• 1:00:29
  those things get like, once those little threads get like kind of pulled together,
• 1:00:32
  it's like we can make a record. You know. You guys like
• 1:00:36
  this, you know, same same with like almost every project I've done has
• 1:00:39
  that to an element where it's like we like this, Oh, I understand
• 1:00:43
  you guys like this boom, I know what. I don't know what the
• 1:00:45
  goal is. It couldn't it could be a totally separate, you know thing.
• 1:00:50
  But it's like and then you'll hear this from pretty much every like big
• 1:00:52
  producer too. They'll just be like talk about like drawing those connections of inspirations
• 1:00:58
  with bands and understanding what even if the music doesn't really feel or sound the
• 1:01:02
  same way, like what makes it tick? That's a huge, huge factor.
• 1:01:08
  So when you're listening to music, any music could be the music that
• 1:01:13
  when you're in a mall you're listening to that, or it could be the
• 1:01:15
  music that you're actually trying to listen to in your car. Are you listening
• 1:01:21
  for the production? Because if you're trying to make those connections and you've got
• 1:01:25
  a band that's like, hey, I like this, and you're like,
• 1:01:28
  oh, I like that, the connection has got to be, oh,
• 1:01:31
  I like how this is produced, or I know how this is produced.
• 1:01:36
  And if you like that band and I like that band and I know how
• 1:01:38
  that that's produced and how that's you know that whole production goes. I'm going
• 1:01:43
  to try to do that for you. If we both like that, like,
• 1:01:45
  is that where you're listening for when you listen to music. I guess
• 1:01:51
  the easy answer is yes, but it's kind of more innate than that.
• 1:01:55
  Have you ever taken either of you guys ever taken a film class? Yeah,
• 1:02:01
  I'm not. I'm not smart enough for that. So okay, well
• 1:02:04
  yeah it does being smart or whatever. But it was like, you know,
• 1:02:07
  I remember I took a film class in high school and my film class
• 1:02:10
  teacher basically like you know, I don't even remember his name, but he
• 1:02:15
  was like, yeah, So just so you guys know, like once you
• 1:02:19
  know, once you kind of learned some of this stuff, it's kind of
• 1:02:22
  hard to watch a movie like without like it's like you kind of can't unknow
• 1:02:25
  it. And I think that's sort of how like mixing and producing kind of
• 1:02:30
  goes. And certainly, I mean I feel that way about film for sure.
• 1:02:34
  Like the more you know, you can't just like watch a I'm not
• 1:02:37
  saying you can't enjoy something, but it's like, yeah, you you you
• 1:02:40
  can't really undo it. So like there's a way like and I've sort of
• 1:02:46
  all I know this about myself now, but like you know, a lot
• 1:02:51
  of people the first thing they hear is like vocals and lyrics and whatever.
• 1:02:54
  I've never been that way. I've always like grabbed onto different stuff, and
• 1:03:01
  it actually took a lot of work for me to start hearing songs more as
• 1:03:07
  a whole and more as like vocal centered and all this other stuff. Um
• 1:03:10
  and now I kind of can pick and shoes of how I hear something,
• 1:03:15
  but production absolutely sticks out. And like, you know, you'll hear something,
• 1:03:20
  yeah, just walking through the you know, the cheesecake factory, and
• 1:03:23
  you'll hear like that's a good sound and snare on that one. You know,
• 1:03:29
  it's like it's just like a Satan Anger song, right, I like
• 1:03:35
  the snay Anger snare. Like I don't I think that whole record just has
• 1:03:39
  a really bad kind of mix or whatever. But like I think, like
• 1:03:44
  and and and that's something gold This is like classic Goldman and I talking about
• 1:03:47
  stuff like until three am. But we we both really like that. And
• 1:03:52
  it's like kind of a snare sound that Goldman would do. I think people
• 1:03:54
  just think they just equate like, oh, that's a ringy drum. It
• 1:03:59
  must sound bad, But it's like no, it's just like kind of everything
• 1:04:00
  in the mix sounds bad, but like that's bringing drums sound good when you
• 1:04:05
  when the whole drum set is tuned right and like everything like it just sounds
• 1:04:09
  like that's that's part of it. Is like like his drum sounds are so
• 1:04:13
  open, Goldman's are so open and like they just have such a they breathe
• 1:04:18
  like real drums, and that gives them a realness. And I think,
• 1:04:21
  like you know a lot of people are like kill every kill every overtone,
• 1:04:26
  kill every sound, and you're like damp in all the drums like crazy,
• 1:04:29
  and it's like, yeah, the drum sound like lifeless and lame and whatever.
• 1:04:31
  That's what That's what they had to do back in the nineteen sixties because
• 1:04:34
  there were so many very very unappealing overtones with drum kids back then. These
• 1:04:41
  days, I mean, yeah, I think part of it. I would.
• 1:04:45
  I would argue and say, like the drum tones that we really like
• 1:04:50
  lift up from that, Like dude, like John Bontom drum tones are super
• 1:04:55
  open and like really well his basses. But I mean like like the rest
• 1:04:59
  of it though, is pretty did the recordings are well? I would I
• 1:05:03
  mean like when the Levy breaks is like the most famous drums sound ever,
• 1:05:06
  and it's like it's like only room mix, that's all it is. You
• 1:05:11
  know how much of that is the is the room as compared to the actual
• 1:05:15
  kids. It's up. It's up for debate. We're not We're not the
• 1:05:17
  people to suss that. It's been talked to death the when the Levy breaks
• 1:05:23
  drums. But it's like it's like, I mean, it's the player,
• 1:05:27
  it's how the drums were tuned. It's a million different things. But yeah,
• 1:05:30
  I mean like drums, drum recording. I mean, Matt's famous for
• 1:05:32
  the way he records drums, and I'm so lucky to basically have learned all
• 1:05:36
  that stuff from him. I can't necessarily do it. I don't have the
• 1:05:40
  same goal in mind anymore. Like I think maybe back in the day,
• 1:05:44
  I used to try to emulate that more and I don't really try to do
• 1:05:46
  that the same way. But sure, yeah, man, I would.
• 1:05:50
  I feel like we need to have a second episode at some point. But
• 1:05:54
  I was gonna say, like, I don't like we could talk for hours
• 1:05:57
  and hours and hours, we could talk forever. It is it is time
• 1:06:00
  for your top five most influential albums. Okay, I'm not I'm gonna try
• 1:06:05
  to not overthink this. Also, do I have to do? I?
• 1:06:11
  Do I have to rank them? I just think you don't have to rank
• 1:06:14
  them, just pick five, But if you could just tell us a little
• 1:06:15
  bit about each and how it influenced you. Now, influence is very different
• 1:06:19
  than like your favorite, right, So yeah, yeah, I'm picking up
• 1:06:23
  Favorite's pointless. I think it is pointless at this point. That's why we
• 1:06:27
  picked most influential. Yeah, yeah, yeah, um yeah, Okay,
• 1:06:33
  I'm gonna I'm gonna start off with a record I I think I mentioned already
• 1:06:40
  or a band I mentioned. Um. When I was growing up, Jimmy
• 1:06:43
  It World was my favorite band, I would say now with some with some
• 1:06:49
  clarity pun intended, uh that Futures is my favorite Jimmy World record. And
• 1:06:56
  I think it's I kind of think it's the best sounding rock record ever.
• 1:07:00
  Um, And it's probably the thing I referenced the most when I'm mixing and
• 1:07:06
  when I'm trying to solve problems, and I just it's just the best thing.
• 1:07:14
  It's so awesome, It's such a good record, and it just sounds
• 1:07:17
  so cool to me. It is. I love the way it starts,
• 1:07:20
  especially Yeah, quick side note about Jimmy. We'll just kind of pertaining to
• 1:07:25
  what we have been talking about. The Bleed American. According to the Drummer,
• 1:07:32
  I can't I kind of never remember, Zach Okay, Zach Lynd.
• 1:07:36
  According to Zach Lynd, I was listening to I Think a Song Exploder episode
• 1:07:42
  and he said it was one of the first records to chart in the top
• 1:07:46
  one hundred recorded on pro Tools. Interesting. Yeah, okay, that's super
• 1:07:56
  interesting song Exploder it was. If it was another if it was another podcast,
• 1:08:00
  it's kind of late though, it's like two thousand oh blow sorry,
• 1:08:04
  bleeding me. I'm still thinking futures. Okay, yeah, uh Bleed American.
• 1:08:08
  Yeah that might be true. Then. Yeah, he said like they
• 1:08:11
  were just like playing around within a whole bunch and they were just having a
• 1:08:14
  blast. Yeah, definitely, Like two thousand nine, two thousand and one
• 1:08:17
  was just very much like a lot of people were hesitant to. I mean,
• 1:08:23
  right, you've got you've got all this money invested in your tape machines
• 1:08:27
  and whatever, and I think like some of the best Well, okay,
• 1:08:32
  so I can keep talking about that, but I'd love to transition to another
• 1:08:35
  influential record. Yes, let's please do nokay I again, man, you
• 1:08:40
  are someone like I really do feel like we could just sit and talk to
• 1:08:43
  you. Well yeah, yeah, we're not like we're not even touch touch
• 1:08:46
  about my epic. We should talk about that another time. We'll have to.
• 1:08:49
  We'll have to. Yeah, okay, let me get to the second
• 1:08:54
  one. Second one. So when it comes to so to big piggyback off
• 1:09:00
  of this like analog versus digital, and like the two were so intertwined like
• 1:09:03
  throughout all of the two thousands. I think the my other favorite producer from
• 1:09:12
  that era is a guy named Eric Valentine and he made he made so many
• 1:09:19
  records that mean a lot to me. But he made a he made a
• 1:09:25
  record called Songs for the Deaf by Queens's Stonnage. Oh yeah, and that
• 1:09:31
  record means a lot to me. And it's very very very very very unique
• 1:09:38
  sounding and it could kind of just never really be made again, like something
• 1:09:43
  like that. Did he do all of the stones of Queens's Stonyage? He
• 1:09:46
  just he just did that one. Just yeah. And they kind of fell
• 1:09:50
  out at the end and they don't and there I think they've recently kind of
• 1:09:56
  patched it up, but they were like there was like the band had said
• 1:10:00
  like, oh yeah, yeah, we didn't even use any of the stuff
• 1:10:02
  he recorded, which is not true. He has the he has the receipts,
• 1:10:08
  so to speak, to prove that he absolutely recorded the album and is
• 1:10:13
  responsible for how unique it sounds. He also did a record I guess I'll
• 1:10:17
  throw in as an honorable mention, like a couple of years later, um
• 1:10:21
  called why Should the Fire Die by Nickel Creek, which the bluegrass record one
• 1:10:27
  of the most insane, crazy sounding things ever. I just think it's one
• 1:10:30
  of the best records. Great, it's so that record is so awesome and
• 1:10:36
  like and like to like, you know, we've been talking about like producers
• 1:10:41
  and genres and it's like this is just like this is this is music in
• 1:10:45
  the modern era is sort of about like like how do you how well how
• 1:10:50
  versatile are you? How well do you adapt? Like you know, Um
• 1:10:55
  so this guy could just kind of do all these amazing you know things,
• 1:10:58
  and I think he was he mastered like analog recording that also plays nice with
• 1:11:04
  digital stuff. Um, I like that, but yeah, let me think
• 1:11:08
  of Okay, so those are those are all I feel like those are all
• 1:11:13
  kind of obvious, but I'm gonna go with a record called Music Has the
• 1:11:18
  Right to Children by by a band called Boards of Canada. And this is
• 1:11:26
  like a late Canada. Yeah, Boards of Canada. I mean anybody who's
• 1:11:30
  into like like electronic music or IDM or anything like this would know this record.
• 1:11:36
  It's very famous, um in that world. But this record, when
• 1:11:42
  I was like maybe sixteen, well so like really my first foray into like
• 1:11:48
  recording music was all based on like synthesizers and stuff, and well here I
• 1:11:56
  really like synthesizers. Hell like like that. It's kind of like like I
• 1:12:02
  don't make that kind of music like professionally, like I mean I put stuff
• 1:12:06
  like that into records. But um, like synth music is really something I
• 1:12:13
  like, just I'm obsessed with. And that's what I really liked when I
• 1:12:15
  was like a teenager. Um, and I loved I loved like bands that
• 1:12:18
  kind of blended that, like I love this band called the Faint, like
• 1:12:21
  a Saddle Creek band. Um, And I loved like Devo and stuff like
• 1:12:27
  like I just like I loved synth music. Do you listen to like the
• 1:12:30
  like the seventies and eighties, like German like Tangerine Dream and stuff like that.
• 1:12:38
  Yeah, not like not a ton like the more like obscure stuff I'm
• 1:12:42
  trying to think of, like the Georgio guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 1:12:45
  I listened to that, uh a little a little bit, but it
• 1:12:49
  was like I kind of liked the stuff that like blended like punk rock and
• 1:12:56
  synth and stuff like that. Um, I grew to like more or of
• 1:13:00
  like the like uh sort of French electronic music whatever. But but I think
• 1:13:08
  like when I was a teenager, that's when I got into Boards of Canada
• 1:13:13
  and I would just say, like, just check out this record music as
• 1:13:16
  the right children. It is so awesome, and a lot of people like
• 1:13:21
  you know who like post rock and stuff. It's not it's it's definitely more
• 1:13:27
  like dark and kind of like spooky than that kind of stuff. But it's
• 1:13:32
  like it's it'll give you some of those same like feelings or you're just getting
• 1:13:36
  to enjoy like instrumental music. But so much of like the so much of
• 1:13:42
  my like desire to like harmonically like push that I'm not even gonna say push
• 1:13:48
  the envelope because that seems like so pedantic, But it's more just like like
• 1:13:54
  I don't I want to have like harmonically interesting content like in any and I
• 1:13:59
  push bands all the time to like if I'm using like very music ye terms,
• 1:14:04
  but like so diatonic music is like you know, like worship music.
• 1:14:08
  It's all the chords, like all the normal chords. There's no chord that
• 1:14:11
  goes outside of the scale or whatever. And I and like Boards of Canada
• 1:14:15
  was sort of like this really eye opening like just music that was just like
• 1:14:18
  felt I had no rules like harmonically speaking, like where it would just pick
• 1:14:24
  crazy like intervals and crazy basslines that just felt like so off the beaten path.
• 1:14:30
  And that kind of like really stuck with me of like, oh,
• 1:14:33
  you can like force people to feel a certain way if you're willing to like
• 1:14:39
  play the wrong notes, you know. And that taught you know that,
• 1:14:44
  and stuff like Nine Inch Nails like taught me like how to really push push
• 1:14:48
  away from like the super you know, like especially like when I was growing
• 1:14:54
  up, like playing in those cent of scream Eli bands, like all those
• 1:14:57
  bands play the same notes. They all they only own though like five notes
• 1:15:00
  you know they like. Yeah, so it really helped to come to that
• 1:15:04
  kind of music with this different you know, like baseline of feel like.
• 1:15:10
  I feel like I got a lot of what you were just talking about there
• 1:15:13
  in Ultra Violet with Sure with my Epic. I mean that was like such
• 1:15:18
  a musical shift and that's the that's the first there. Yeah, that's the
• 1:15:24
  first record that I wrote for Yeah, um because I was involved with uh
• 1:15:30
  Viscera, Yeah, I was involved in that, but I I basically started
• 1:15:36
  my journey with my Epic, like right when Viscera was like in the studio,
• 1:15:41
  so the songs were already written. Everything was already sure um so so
• 1:15:45
  ultra Violet and Violence, Yeah, definitely have more of my like chords sensibility,
• 1:15:50
  Yeah for sure. Cool. All right, last record I'm gonna go.
• 1:15:56
  Man, I feel like I could go with another electronic record. I
• 1:16:01
  could go with like, I feel like there's post rock record. I'm curious.
• 1:16:06
  I'm curious to see what kind of I don't. I do not have
• 1:16:09
  a like post rock. It's weird, you know, talking about like I
• 1:16:12
  don't listen to post rock. I don't, Okay, like I would if
• 1:16:16
  someone wants a post rock recommendation. I think this will destroy is really good.
• 1:16:21
  Cigaret Rose is obviously amazing. Uh that's not really. It's interesting that
• 1:16:26
  you point out this will destroy you for that because I've often heard from fans
• 1:16:30
  of the band that their albums are not produced well at all. It doesn't
• 1:16:35
  matter. Post rock doesn't postmark rock shouldn't even sound good. It should just
• 1:16:39
  sound like, just put one mic in the room. You know. It's
• 1:16:42
  about feeling, It's about it's what I feel like. You know. Um,
• 1:16:45
  my favorite post rock band is a band called Maguay. Yeah. They
• 1:16:50
  make, they make. They are my most listen to UH artists period.
• 1:16:55
  Yeah, Like, I don't usually listen to instrumental music that's like music,
• 1:17:00
  but if I'm going to, it's probably gonna be Maglai um and I think
• 1:17:04
  they are awesome. I think. Um. If I was to pick an
• 1:17:09
  influence on post rock record, it would be what is the name of the
• 1:17:14
  one that I'm thinking of that has uh? They have so many records out
• 1:17:19
  now, Uh, hardcore will never die, but you will. That's the
• 1:17:25
  one that really, Yes, that's my favorite one for sure, and uh
• 1:17:30
  that's why people forget about Yeah, they're wrong, it's wrongs. There's a
• 1:17:38
  song on that record And dude, this drives Aaron nuts because he likes post
• 1:17:44
  Rocolate key. He doesn't like it as much as he used to. But
• 1:17:46
  there's a song on there called Rando Pano. Yes, this is my favorite
• 1:17:50
  Muguay song. Uh. And it's just all distortion, which I think this
• 1:17:57
  is this is the whole thing. But like I so, I don't really
• 1:18:01
  like like reverb, like guitar reverb whatever. Like I think that's why post
• 1:18:08
  rock doesn't really do a lot for me, because like a lot of it's
• 1:18:10
  just like washed out Revere. You know, like we're talking, you know,
• 1:18:13
  we're talking about these rocks, sure exactly, and that's this song.
• 1:18:17
  Particularly, Rando Panel is like all it's like, instead of reverb to like
• 1:18:21
  create a wall of sound, it's just distortion. It's like five different just
• 1:18:26
  like weirdly eq distorted guitars that just like drone. But there's no like there's
• 1:18:30
  no like washed out like you know, And I just think like that's how
• 1:18:34
  to do poster rock is just all distortion, you know. But yeah,
• 1:18:39
  I work with band sometimes and they just think like, oh, you must
• 1:18:41
  love like revert. I'm like, wow, dude, like all my favorite
• 1:18:45
  like guitarists and band you know, we were just talking about like the driest
• 1:18:47
  record ever, The those Queens of Stone Age record is insane. It's just
• 1:18:53
  like fuzzy mud guitars that are completely dry, Like that's what I really really
• 1:18:59
  like, you know, And like I think one time I was telling a
• 1:19:02
  band that like my favorite bands, probably Radiohead. That's probably the band I
• 1:19:05
  like, like listen to the most and is the most meaningful just as a
• 1:19:11
  whole, and and they're like, oh, you must love like reveryone.
• 1:19:15
  I was like, dude, radio it doesn't even like it's not even reever
• 1:19:18
  be like, dude. Johnny Greenwood's guitar parts are the most like angular,
• 1:19:23
  like dry weird, you know. And same with Tommy Mark and the and
• 1:19:27
  then ed Will will sometimes have some like washed out like background thing or whatever,
• 1:19:31
  which is the part that I don't care about, you know, like
• 1:19:34
  it's not really it's just a little candy pieces on the arrangement of the song,
• 1:19:39
  which I really appreciate. So that's my my whole thing about post rock.
• 1:19:43
  It's fine. Post rock is fine, but it's not fine. So
• 1:19:49
  no, no, yeah, I just I'm trying to think of I was
• 1:19:54
  gonna say Justice, which is another like electronic band, but I feel like
• 1:19:59
  I've touched. I really like, like I'm I'm really particular about every genre,
• 1:20:04
  but I like something in every genre for sure. There's like no genre
• 1:20:08
  of music I would say I don't like um, and I could name probably
• 1:20:11
  like five albums from each genre that I think are amazing. And Justice is
• 1:20:15
  insanely influential band on me, like you know, talking about like death Therapy
• 1:20:21
  or whatever, like dude, that there's so much stuff on there. That's
• 1:20:25
  just exactly me trying to like, you know, make a justice thing happen
• 1:20:30
  in this to Jason is so familiar with Justice, well he is now because
• 1:20:34
  I forced it down his throat. You know, when we were talking with
• 1:20:38
  Jason about death Therapy, is like yeah, these young guys, they just
• 1:20:42
  kept like telling me like, no, this is what this is, what
• 1:20:45
  this is supposed to sound like because of this band. And he's like,
• 1:20:47
  I haven't heard a band after two thousand. I don't know what any of
• 1:20:50
  this is. That's so not true, because Jason has showed me stuff.
• 1:20:54
  He's just like he's goofing. He's goofing because like, yeah, Jason is
• 1:21:00
  Jason will show me stuff and and he'll he'll be like you should check this
• 1:21:03
  out, like he has his ear to the ground. I think it's like
• 1:21:06
  part of his image that he's the old guy that doesn't care, and you
• 1:21:11
  know, I get it. I mean I'm not you know, I just
• 1:21:14
  think it's, uh, it's not totally in line with with my experience of
• 1:21:17
  working with him. I think he's very curious about like what's going on and
• 1:21:21
  and like especially when in the full context of like the rest of that band,
• 1:21:27
  it's like he you know, like he's the one who showed me,
• 1:21:30
  uh Gujira and like got me super into I mean, there's so much Gojira
• 1:21:34
  like influence on on that record, and it's like, yeah, he showed
• 1:21:38
  it to me, and he was like the one who was excited about it,
• 1:21:41
  and that's why we win that direction. So it's like, you know,
• 1:21:44
  he he's he's he's goofing on you guys. I'm gonna pick I'm gonna
• 1:21:50
  pick a more recent album, but as probably one of my favorite albums of
• 1:21:57
  the last like ten years. I'm gonna go with a Andy Schoff on The
• 1:22:03
  album's called The Party, and this is like, how would you describe it?
• 1:22:11
  Andy Schoff. It's a singer songwriter, folk indie pop rock something like
• 1:22:18
  that. I don't know, there is nobody that sounds like this. Dude.
• 1:22:24
  He is unbelievable. I think he's just like got such a special thing.
• 1:22:32
  I think his songwriting on this record is like so like entrancing, and
• 1:22:39
  like he tells these amazing stories and this is kind of like a loose concept
• 1:22:43
  album about all the people milling around in a party. And it's like,
• 1:22:47
  sometimes it feels like Randy Newman and sometimes it feels like Cat Stevens or something.
• 1:22:54
  You know, it's just got all this crazy you know, like it
• 1:22:57
  just feels like it's all over the place. But like it the record just
• 1:23:00
  sounds insane. Like it's just so like detailed and like warm and and and
• 1:23:09
  like it sounds like really small and really big at the same time. It's
• 1:23:14
  really dry and also really like layered at the same time. And it's just
• 1:23:17
  like crazy. And he plays all the instruments and he plays these beautiful like
• 1:23:23
  clarinet hearts, and he writes it's just it's so awesome. He's I have
• 1:23:28
  a He's that record is like my phone case, Like I bought it.
• 1:23:33
  It's super super cool. I think, Yeah, anybody who's like around me
• 1:23:39
  all the time? Will hear this being played often? Um? And I
• 1:23:43
  also throw a the He has a another record under the name Fox Warren,
• 1:23:50
  which is like kind of I guess like his his high school band or whatever.
• 1:23:54
  I think he was like, I'm gonna throw my old bandmates a bone.
• 1:23:57
  And now that I'm like a you know, so what famous indie icon
• 1:24:01
  guy. Um, and they made a record under Foxhorn and it's just also
• 1:24:06
  really really incredible and has a few other flavors to it and and uh whatever.
• 1:24:12
  But yeah, it's like if you're you know, if you're at all
• 1:24:15
  interested in this type of music, which is like hard to you know,
• 1:24:19
  I guess I could call it like indie rock or or whatever. But it's
• 1:24:24
  like there's this whole other kind of world that that is. Uh, it's
• 1:24:29
  kind of like this this isn't totally touching. Like there's a scene right now
• 1:24:35
  in LA that's like the kind of all revolves around sound City, the studio
• 1:24:44
  like which you guys have probably heard of, um, but right now sound
• 1:24:46
  City is being run by my favorite guitarist, favorite favorite living well. I
• 1:24:53
  was gonna David Gilmour is still alive from Pink Floyd. He's probably my favorite
• 1:24:57
  Charis Yeah, but my favorite modern guitarist is this guy named Blake Mills.
• 1:25:03
  He's an unbelievable producer, songwriter and him Blake Mills, and um, this
• 1:25:12
  other guy by the name Tony Berg who actually did co produce the uh Watch
• 1:25:16
  of the Fire Diet record. Um, but they both run sound City right
• 1:25:20
  now, and they're pumping out all these like unbelievable records, a lot of
• 1:25:26
  like you guys maybe heard of, like Phoebe Bridgers, like the biggest new
• 1:25:30
  art. Yeah. So it's like this, there's this huge, massive scene
• 1:25:34
  coming out of those guys, and it's like that's a that's a huge part
• 1:25:39
  of like a lot of the music I listened to in my free time,
• 1:25:42
  you know. So I think like, yeah, but anyway, I feel
• 1:25:45
  like it covers some different stuff, you know. Yeah, I think I
• 1:25:47
  think you gave our our listeners a ton of the different things listening. For
• 1:25:49
  sure, if you've never listened to the Party, listen to that record because
• 1:25:53
  it's like mind blowingly good. And also, dude, listen to the Boards
• 1:25:56
  of Canada for sure. I put both from in my in my cue to
• 1:26:00
  listen to. Yeah, uh man, great list excited to learn to learn
• 1:26:04
  some more about some of these artists. Um, but now, what would
• 1:26:08
  you like to plug? What would I like to plug? It's gotta be
• 1:26:12
  really hard for you because you've been involved with so many different things. Well,
• 1:26:15
  I'll plug the BTA thing. We talked about it a lot. If
• 1:26:17
  you haven't listened to it, it's it's prog metal, so you can stomach
• 1:26:23
  that. Go listen to it. Calason does the best vocal performance. His
• 1:26:28
  vocals are amazing and I have like very little to do with it because he
• 1:26:31
  recorded them all himself at a at a studio like buy his house. He
• 1:26:35
  like went there sequestered himself, like would go like multiple times a week and
• 1:26:41
  would just send me stuff and I'd be like, sounds great, keep going
• 1:26:44
  like he like that is the one out element of the record that like obviously,
• 1:26:47
  like I kind of have a mixing style for his vocals that I have
• 1:26:50
  used a lot, but it's like that he just like absolutely killed it vocally.
• 1:26:56
  Children are the great extinction. Yeah, I'll plug that. I mean
• 1:27:00
  I should, like, let's talk about my epic another time, because there's
• 1:27:02
  a lot of stuff I can't talk about right now. Like we're like,
• 1:27:06
  you know, look like, I mean, it's open knowledge that we're working
• 1:27:10
  on a new record, but it's like there's a lot of other details we
• 1:27:12
  can't talk about. I've heard that since since twenty nineteen, so sure,
• 1:27:16
  and it's been true since then for sure. It's long, long old record
• 1:27:23
  that we're working on. So but yeah, I want to talk about it,
• 1:27:26
  but there's a lot of stuff to talk about it, and it's uh,
• 1:27:28
  you know, it's a it's a it's a whole thing sick. Well,
• 1:27:31
  we'll we'll definitely have you back on hopefully sometime soon to be able to
• 1:27:34
  do that absolutely, I will. Dude, I told you I love chit
• 1:27:38
  chat. Yeah. Man, you're you're you're a hang. You're a good
• 1:27:41
  hang. I get why people want to record if you yeah, anything else
• 1:27:45
  you'd like to plug? I'm you know you guys ever heard of band Weezer?
• 1:27:50
  Never? Yeah yeah, yeah, They've got a couple of couple of
• 1:27:53
  big songs. I think, Um, yeah, everybody should go buy Weezer
• 1:27:59
  records because I played with them what no way ho? Um? I played,
• 1:28:09
  Uh did you do Africa with them? No? No, So I
• 1:28:15
  played Uh this was in two thousand and eight. Yeah, It's like Beverly
• 1:28:20
  Hills, Right, So I played Beverly Hills. I did do that,
• 1:28:24
  and then I also played Island in the Sun on acoustic guitar. Oh wow.
• 1:28:29
  And they did this I'm trying to remember what it was called. I
• 1:28:30
  think it was called Hullabaloo or something like that, but it was like basically
• 1:28:36
  they had this like contest where you would send in like a little video of
• 1:28:42
  yourself like playing whatever instrument you were proficient on, so it could be like
• 1:28:46
  trombone or like glarinet or kazoo whatever, and then they would like they would
• 1:28:53
  like read the submissions, read them, they would watch them, come on,
• 1:28:57
  come on, we know, they would watch them and then decide and
• 1:29:00
  they would have like a handful of people in each city, you know,
• 1:29:02
  to come on and do and they would basically this is kind of like the
• 1:29:05
  part of the show where they would do like um, you know, like
• 1:29:12
  well like at big shows where they like go out and they go to a
• 1:29:15
  different setup and it's like a little small drum set and like acoustic guitars.
• 1:29:19
  It's like kind of like that, and they would do that for it,
• 1:29:21
  and they did that for two songs, and they did Alan Son and Beverly
• 1:29:25
  Hills and yeah, I played acousta guitar for it. How did you get
• 1:29:28
  connected with them? Again? I worked at a factory that was like we
• 1:29:32
  made gift cards for Target and Best Buy and whatever. And at the time
• 1:29:38
  I was working in the the department that like prints the numbers and then the
• 1:29:43
  little like strip that goes over, yeah, the little scratch off. And
• 1:29:47
  one of the guys and my dad also worked there. And one of the
• 1:29:50
  guys in my dad's department was actually like his best friend or whatever worked to
• 1:29:58
  interscope and so it had like gotten around the factory floor that like I was
• 1:30:03
  into wheezer, which is that was true? And and then the guy was,
• 1:30:11
  well, was there a little falling out with the Rivers? I did
• 1:30:16
  not meet? Did you end up going to Gale instead of Harvard? I
• 1:30:21
  didn't meet Rivers at this show. I met Brian Bell and Scott and Pat
• 1:30:29
  because they because they had like, uh, we had a green room situation
• 1:30:32
  and we had like a little rehearsal um and uh. And so Brian Bell
• 1:30:39
  was like playing the acous guitar and like going whatever. And I have this
• 1:30:42
  one memory of um, like because I'm a musician, I kind of knew
• 1:30:48
  how to play the song, specifically knew how they played Island in the Sun
• 1:30:54
  and like, there was two other people who were playing acousa guitar, but
• 1:30:57
  they were just playing like block chords. And so the Brian Bell came up
• 1:31:01
  to me and was like, you see, you actually know how to play
• 1:31:03
  the song. And I was like, yeah, man, I'm cool,
• 1:31:05
  Like I get it. I do know how to play this song. So
• 1:31:09
  that was that was kind of cool. But I did I met Rivers because
• 1:31:13
  in twenty so this is like two eight or two to nine. But then
• 1:31:17
  twenty fourteen, I did the Weezer Cruise and went on the cruise with them
• 1:31:26
  because one of my friends from Minneapolis was their personal assistant. So and then
• 1:31:30
  I met Rivers on that and met the other guys and whatever. Was it
• 1:31:34
  a Rivers cruise? No? No, we went to the Bahamas and uh
• 1:31:41
  and uh it was cool. There was a lot of other bands on there.
• 1:31:44
  Uh, Like I mean I was a Weezer like freak when I was
• 1:31:46
  in high school, so it was like all these bands that like are from
• 1:31:49
  like the message boards and stuff. This band called Ozma it was really cool.
• 1:31:54
  Um, but then they had like dive there like a cool band like
• 1:31:57
  Toro. Imah, that's like another the all a bunch of bands. It
• 1:32:01
  got like way bigger damn. Anyway, your life is so interesting. I
• 1:32:06
  want to beat you. I really do. I wish I would have gotten
• 1:32:11
  to play with Wheezer, but I would have been playing the black cards just
• 1:32:15
  like do you know what's funny? Is like I was so distraught because when
• 1:32:23
  I was in high school, so this happened when I was like out of
• 1:32:27
  the house, like I was like I was out of college, even because
• 1:32:29
  I only I dropped out of college like right away, so I was probably
• 1:32:31
  like twenty when I played with him. But when I was sixteen, I
• 1:32:39
  had tickets to go see Wheezer. This would I mean, I guess this
• 1:32:43
  was probably like between albums and like they were playing legendary music venue First Avenue
• 1:32:50
  in Minneapolis. Yeah, and I was in the school like variety show because
• 1:32:59
  I played in the jazz band, so we were always are like in the
• 1:33:01
  pit and I played guitar for that and um, and I was gonna ditch
• 1:33:08
  a performance night. I was like, dude, we got Weezer tickets,
• 1:33:11
  We're gonna go. It was like me and my friend, my high school
• 1:33:13
  buddies and my parents found out and they were like, wait, you're not
• 1:33:16
  doing this, that's not right. You gotta go to this perform I was
• 1:33:19
  like, dude, who, no one's gonna care. It's just a stupid
• 1:33:21
  variety show for a jazz band. Like They're gonna be fine, and like,
• 1:33:26
  I'm gonna go see Weezer with my friends. It's gonna be awesome.
• 1:33:29
  And I had the guy who took my place, who like ended up taking
• 1:33:33
  my ticket, like got pulled up on stage to play, to play guitar
• 1:33:38
  and like took home the guitar, like had the Weezer guitar, and I
• 1:33:41
  was so mad. I was like furious. I was like, this is
• 1:33:45
  my ship. Stop playing with Weezer. And then like serendipitously, later on,
• 1:33:50
  it just all came together. It's like kind of how life works sometimes.
• 1:33:54
  Thank god for that gift card factor York Net. Yeah yeah, it
• 1:34:00
  wasn't for the silver line. Dude, Uh, thank you, thank you,
• 1:34:03
  thank you so much. Nate. This was This has been a blast.
• 1:34:06
  We would love to have you on multiple times after this if we possibly
• 1:34:10
  can. Uh, your your inside knowledge and wealth of experiences are just astounding
• 1:34:16
  to me. And I'm uh, you know, you played with Wheezer,
• 1:34:20
  You've you've worked or you do work with with uh Matt Goldman, You've you've
• 1:34:26
  worked with some of our favorite bands, UM, and you've you've influenced the
• 1:34:30
  scene in a in a way that is uh indelibly marked forever. I appreciate
• 1:34:36
  that, and we that's good. New appreciate you and your talents and everything
• 1:34:41
  that you provide to us. So uh, thank you, Thank you again.
• 1:34:45
  Absolutely. I love to dude, I'd love to come back. There's
• 1:34:48
  a million more things that talked about. S